Global practitioner assessment and management of mental fatigue and mental recovery in high-performance sport: A need for evidence-based best-practice guidelines.

Background: Mental fatigue and mental recovery have gained scientific attention in relation to sporting performance, yet best practice assessment and management methods are lacking. A greater understanding of current knowledge and practices in high-performance sport are necessary.
Objective: To understand the contemporary knowledge, beliefs, monitoring processes, management strategies, perceived responsibility, sources of evidence, and challenges, when assessing the mental fatigue and mental recovery of athletes in high-performance sport.
Methods: A mixed-methods survey approach obtained information from 156 multi-disciplinary high-performance sport practitioners. Descriptive outputs were reported and potential differences between key concepts were detected using Wilcoxon-signed rank analysis. Thematic analysis interpreted open-text responses.
Results: Only 11.5% and 5.1% of respondents indicated they were "very" knowledgeable about mental fatigue and mental recovery, respectively. Knowledge (p < 0.001) and confidence in application (p = 0.001) were significantly greater for mental fatigue than mental recovery. Nearly all respondents perceived mental fatigue and mental recovery impacted training and competition performance, with a greater negative impact during competition (p < 0.001). A limited number of respondents reported deliberate assessment (31.1%) or management (51.2%) of mental fatigue and mental recovery. A combination of sources of evidence were used to inform practice, with common challenges to implementation including staff knowledge, athlete-buy in, time-availability, and a lack of evidence. Practitioners reported that assessing and managing mental fatigue and mental recovery was multi-disciplinary in nature.
Conclusion: Practitioners reported that mental fatigue and mental recovery did impact performance, yet this was not reflected in the implementation of evidence-based assessment and management practices in high-performance sport.
(© 2023 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science In Sports published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)