The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of mental fatigue on passing decision-making in professional soccer athletes. A controlled and counterbalanced cross-over design was adopted consisting of three visits with a 1-week interval between sessions. Twenty professional soccer male athletes participated in three randomized conditions divided into three visits: control, 15-min Stroop task, and 30-min Stroop task. Inhibitory control was accessed by the Stroop task (accuracy and response time) before and after induced mental fatigue protocol. The athletes played a training match (90-min) following the experimental conditions. The Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI) was used for the passing decisionmaking analysis. The GPAI analysis showed impaired passing decision-making performance following the 30-min Stroop task compared with the 15-min and control condition (F (2,17) = 6.99, p = .01). Moreover, an increase in response time during the Stroop task was found following 30-min Stroop task condition (F (2,17) = 6.57, p = .03) compared to 15-min of Stroop task and control conditions. Prolonged cognitive tasks may be considered a mediating factor in passing decisionmaking performance in male professional soccer athletes throughout a full-length training match. Thus, athletes should avoid highly demanding-cognitive tasks before a soccer match. Future studies are required to explore more ecological cognitive tasks to induce mental fatigue (i.e. smartphones and video-games) and their effects on other performance indicators (e.g. physical, technical, tactical) in a full-length training match setting.

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This study aimed to verify the occurrence of the relative age effect (RAE) in male elite young handball athletes according to the playing position and its association with team performance in a World Championship. Data from 383 handball athletes from 24 countries who participated in the 7th World Men’s Championship in the under-19 category were analyzed. RAE was investigated from the birth trimester of the athletes, their playing position, and final ranking in the Championship. The results showed an overrepresentation of athletes born in the first two trimesters (Q1 and Q2) (χ2(3) = 32.97; p < 0.001, ω = 0.29). The analysis of the athlete’s position showed that most wings (χ2(3) = 18.37; p < 0.001, ω = 0.32) and backs (χ2(3) = 12.51; p = 0.006, ω = 0.34) were born in the first trimesters (Q1 and Q2). The ranking in the Championship presented no significant association with the date of the birth (p > 0.05). The results showed the existence of the RAE in youth handball elite athletes, especially for the back and wing positions. However, the strategy of selecting is questionable once the presence of RAE was not associated with competitive success.

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Discovering any performance degradation effect of racing swimmers’ use of social media smartphone apps might lead to new training and race preparation protocols, including pre-meet smartphone avoidance. This study’s objective was to analyze the performance effects of using smartphone social media apps on the 50, 100, and 200-m freestyle among 25 high-level swimmers. Each participant performed the three race distances in two conditions: with smartphone app exposure (50-MF, 100-MF, and 200-MF) and without (50-CON, 100-CON, and 200-CON). We randomized the order of these two conditions across participants. While smartphone app use was not associated with statistically significant performance differences on the shortest race (50CON versus 50MF), a repeated measures ANOVA showed a significant condition × time interaction for the swimmers’100-m freestyle performance ( p = 0.01), with a significantly slower performance following smartphone app use evident in the last half of this race ( p = 0.02) but not in the first half ( p = 0.41). We also found a condition × time interaction in the same direction (slower for swimmers who used the smartphone app) for the 200-m freestyle performance ( p = 0.01), with the slower performance occurring in the second ( p = 0.01) but not the first ( p = 0.91), third ( p = 0.07) or fourth ( p = 0.06 ) quarters of this race. Thus, prolonged smartphone social media app use was associated with reduced performance from elite swimmers on the 100- and 200- but not the 50-m freestyle.