The PESP Research group delivered an interactive workshop to a group of students from Skegness Academy during a recent visit to the Human Performance Centre at the University of Lincoln. Delivered by Dr Mark F Smith, the workshop explored the importance of cognitive function and exercise exposing the students to a number of different theories and practical tasks. Collecting data during a live experiment, Dr Smith comments:

“students were given a opportunity to undertake a practical session that our Undergraduates would normally receive. This offered them all a real insight into the fun and engaging delivery that takes place within our centre”.

In late October, senior lecturer Paul Murgatroyd, travelled with the GB junior orienteering squad to the European Youth Orienteering Championships in Portugal, where he worked in a coaching and sport science support capacity with the team. Focussing on pre-competition preparation, Paul’s role was to assist the athletes in maximising their state of readiness for the weekend’s races, which included two individual events and a relay event for the under 16 and under 18 teams. Working on their physical and psychological warm-up procedures, the experience built on other support work provided at squad camps throughout the year and was a culmination of the athletes’ seasons. Results were positive, with many of the athletes recording top twenty positions against some strong international opposition, and the weekend culminated in a podium placing for the Men’s Under 16 relay team.

New equipment obtained by the PESP group, will for the first time allow us to examine the impact of cognitive loading on our ability to pace during exercise performance. Research lead by Dr Mark F Smith and James Mccarron will use functional near-inferred spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure the flow of oxygen within selected regions of the brain whilst participants both exercise and complete a series of cognitive challenges. The findings of this research hope to shed further light on the importance of central brain processes in the regulation of a pacing strategy during exercise performance.

In August PESP group member and PhD student James Mccarron attended and presented part of his doctoral research at ISSSMC held at Northumbria University. This is one of the upcoming and most well respected conferences within the area. The title of his poster presentation was “Brain Drain: the impact of cognitive load on self-paced endurance running”. This research was novel as no study before has used a cognitive task throughout the entire duration of the bout of exercise used. In addition, no study has assessed the impact of such cognitive load on exercise performance which in this case was self-paced 5km run. The greater the cognitive load, i.e. use of neural processes mediated via prefrontal regions, the worse the performance in a 5km. In addition, there appears to be a draining effect on prefrontal dependent cognition throughout the 5km run. This may be due to a reduced amount of resources in this area of the brain or a competition between cognitive task performance and the execution of self-paced running. This has important theoretical and applied application to endurance exercise performance.