Is Motivation Associated with Mental Fatigue during Padel Trainings? a Pilot Study

Motivation seems to enhance athletes' mental efforts, but this has not been tested yet in padel. The objective was to test the effects of motivation on mental fatigue during padel trainings. Thirty-six elite youth players participated (twenty-two males, M-age = 17.40, SDage = 2.16, and fourteen females, M-age = 17.90, SDage = 3.21). We designed four padel training matches, introducing a constraint in two of them in a counterbalanced order. The constraint was: Couples that win more sets in these two matches obtain a free lesson with a professional padel player. Motivation was quantified by a questionnaire before the matches. Moreover, subjective feelings of mental load and fatigue were measured with questionnaires, and objective measures of fatigue were quantified through heart-rate variability and reaction time. Results suggest that the constraint significantly increases motivation (p < 0.001). Furthermore, in these matches, players reported significantly higher feelings and objective measures of fatigue (p < 0.001 for HRV and VAS; p = 0.04 for reaction time). An increase in the resources used by the neural facilitation system, mediated by higher values of motivation, seems a relevant candidate to explain this phenomenon.