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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Sport Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1523915

This article is part of the Research Topic Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Team Sports: Contextualizing Training and Competition Demands -Volume II View all 8 articles

MONITORING THE COGNITIVE LOAD IN COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENTS IN PROFESSIONAL WOMEN'S BASKETBALL

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
  • 2 Faculty of Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
  • 3 Sports Research Institute, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Bellaterra, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study aims to describe the dynamics of training loads during specific training sessions, to determine the possible differences among the metrics of Cognitive Load (CL), External Load (EL) and Internal Load (IL) between training sessions and to assess the possible relationship between the CL, EL and IL variables to completely monitor the athletes' performance level. Ten professional female basketball players (age 26.45 ± 3.5 years) took part in this descriptive study throughout the second round of competition, completing a total of 11 competitive microcycles. The training sessions were classifiedaccording to the distance between the previous game and the next one (MD +/-X), making distinctions between MD+2, MD-4, MD-3, MD-2 and MD-1. The following descriptive variables of the tasks were recorded: specificity, number of players, playing space, time pressure, decision-making and competitive stimulus. The analysed variables were rate of perceived cognitive exertion (RPE Cog) and heart rate variability (HRV) for CL, total amount of high intensity actions (HI-T) and total sum of accelerationsdecelerations (AD-T) for EL, and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and summated hear rate zones (SHRZ) for IL. The load dynamics showed an increase in uncertainty throughout the microcycle, progressing from less to more specific, and a load distribution in which MD+2 and MD-1 show the lowest values and MD-4, MD-3 and MD-2 the highest. Significant differences (p<0.01) were found between sessions for all the analysed variables. Possible relationships between the CL, EL and IL metrics were also established. This study shows the reality of a professional team, where the distance from the next match determines the dynamics of the workload, promoting an increase in uncertainty and specificity throughout the microcycle, thus causing an increase in cognitive load.

    Keywords: cognitive resources, team sports, load monitoring, Integral training, Training demands

    Received: 06 Nov 2024; Accepted: 26 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 FUSTER, Capdevila and Caparros. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: JOAN FUSTER, National Institute of Physical Education of Catalonia, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, 08038, Catalonia, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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