Mental Fatigue and Training Readiness: Mar ‘25
Hey, this is Tom and Emma from High North Performance with our March 2025 newsletter.
We hope your training has been going well so far this year and if you’ve ticked off any early season goals, fingers crossed they’ve been successful 💪
The focus of this month’s newsletter should hopefully resonate with the majority of readers who hold down a demanding job, family life and otherwise lead an action-packed existence…
..and that is how mental fatigue can affect your ability to train well and perform workouts to a high level of quality.
We reckon it’s worth discussing because it can often be forgotten as a contributing factor to not being able to train as you might hope.
So, when we think about what limits our performance in training, it’s common to focus on factors like muscular fatigue, poor nutrition, inadequate sleep etc. But what about when your mind and mood is holding you back more than your body?
A study published in PLOS One (link) found that mental fatigue can significantly impair cycling time trial (TT) performance. The study compared cyclists who performed a simple, non-demanding task before a TT versus those who completed a cognitively demanding and frustrating one. The latter group performed worse, even though their physical capacity hadn’t changed.
This and similar research appears to highlight a crucial point: mental exhaustion isn’t just about feeling tired — it has real consequences for your ability to push yourself physically.
For cyclists and endurance athletes, the upshot of this means that a long, stressful day at work or mentally-draining life demands can have a direct impact on training quality!
If you’ve been problem-solving, making high-stakes decisions, or simply dealing with common frustrations and challenges throughout the day, you may well not have the same capacity to execute a demanding workout (e.g. a high-intensity session) effectively.
Whilst anecdotally this won’t be much of a surprise, it can sometimes be forgotten about as an attributable factor after a sub-par training performance. Given these findings, it makes sense for us to structure training around both physical as well as mental readiness.
Here are 3 suggestions to mitigate the effects of mental fatigue or at least deal with the consequences!
Schedule high-intensity sessions when you're mentally fresh: If possible, perform key interval workouts at a time of day when your cognitive load is lower (e.g. morning sessions before work instead of after a mentally exhausting day).
Use mental recovery strategies: Meditation, short breaks, or engaging in low-effort activities before training may help preserve cognitive resources.
Adjust expectations on high-stress days: If work or life stress has been high, modifying workout demands (e.g., shifting a hard session to another day or substituting for a lower-intensity ride) can help maintain long-term consistency.
Some athletes will find they perform better in the morning before daily stress accumulates, while others may need a post-work decompression period before training. Experimenting with timing can help you find when you’re most mentally and physically primed for hard efforts.
In summary, readiness-to-train isn’t just about the legs, it’s about the brain too! Recognising the role of mental fatigue and adjusting accordingly can lead to better training outcomes, improved consistency, and a more sustainable approach to performance.
Let us know your thoughts on this topic, your experiences with training and mental fatigue, and in particular what strategies you’ve employed to overcome this potential hurdle.
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Finally, if you have any questions or comments on this month’s newsletter topic, feel free to send them though. Thanks as ever for your time reading this email and we’ll catch you again soon on the next one 👍
Tom and Emma
High North Performance
