Designing your athletes cognitive baseline.
Follow a winning formula for your athletes cognitive training.
Cognitive baselines are simple to set up if you follow our easy three step process, this will ensure that you and are athlete are following a winning formula for your cognitive training.
STEP ONE
Cognitive Demands and KPIs
Cognitive demands
When designing a cognitive baseline you need to take into consideration the cognitive demands that athlete is put under when performing their sport. We suggest listing each demand in order of importance. Once you have established your cognitive demands priority list you can move onto setting up your athletes KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).
Key Performance Indicator
KPI’s will keep your athlete focused and ensure they know exactly what they are moving towards in each mesocycle.
For example you may set an athlete a seasonal KPIs to achieve 10% variation on all sustained attention tasks or you may set KPIs for each specific task. It is important that you set seasonal KPIs before setting KPIs for the current mesocycle. Once you have set both sets of KPIs they assist you in your cognitive programme design.
Setting clear KPIs per mesocycle will also tell guide your programme to ensure your athlete is hitting the right stepping stones towards their seasonal KPI’s. If the results are not as you expected and the athlete is not hitting their KPIs it is time to review their cognitive training plan.
STEP TWO
Selecting cognitive tasks
Cognitive Tasks
You want to make sure you are selective with your tasks and select a MAX of 3 tasks which are inline with the athletes cognitive demands. Doing too many tasks for a short period of time has less data which means more variability. You are better to do less tasks for a longer duration than a-lot of tasks for a short period of time when performing baseline testing.
Note: The max of 3 cognitive tasks mentioned above does not include a PVT of Mackworth pre and post baseline test to assess the level of cognitive fatigue.
STEP THREE
Cognitive Load
Now you have determined the athletes cognitive demands and set the athletes KPIs per mesocycle and season you now need to make sure there is enough cognitive load in the baseline. The baseline needs to also be challenging enough and induce a certain level of fatigue so you can compare the percentage of change, if the baseline is to easy or to short you and the athlete will be disappointed on the post data analysis.
Baseline Durations
Based on 42 trials per minute
10 min Baseline
- 420 decisions
30 min Baseline
- 1,260 decisions
45 min Baseline
- 1,890 decisions
60 min Baseline
- 2,700 decisions
Baseline FAQs
What is the optimal baseline task length per season?
Off Season drill duration
- 10m
- 20m
- 30m
Pre Season drill duration
- 5m
- 10m
- 20m
- 30m
In Season drill duration
- 5m
I am an endurance athlete, what are the best tasks for my baseline test?
- Sustained Attention
- Response Inhibition
Is it best to do my baseline pre or post physical training?
- This will depend on your goal. You could perform your cognitive baseline followed by your physical baseline test or you could also do vice versa.
How often should I do my baseline test?
- At the beginning and end of each mesocycle
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