Fatigue.
Central and peripheral fatigue, critical power, and why late-game claims need evidence.
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Fatigue is not one thing, which is why it is argued about so badly. Central and peripheral fatigue have different causes, different timelines, and different fixes — and the athlete's own rating is often the most informative number available.
What this field actually measures
- Central vs peripheral fatigue
Reduced neural drive versus reduced force capacity in the muscle itself.
ReferenceInterpolated twitch and stimulation protocols separate the two in lab settings.
- Critical power
The highest sustainable intensity before an unavoidable drift toward exhaustion.
ReferenceAbove it, time to exhaustion is bounded by a finite work capacity (W′).
- RPE (rating of perceived exertion)
The athlete's own effort rating on a fixed scale.
ReferenceSession-RPE correlates strongly with objective internal load across sports and costs nothing.
LimitIt can be gamed by anyone who wants to stay on the field.
Evidence & metrics
The published work behind the numbers above, and the public datasets you can open to check us. If a claim can’t be traced here, we don’t print it.
Citations
Central governor and the anticipatory regulation of exercise performance
Noakes — British Journal of Sports Medicine · 2012
Argues pacing is centrally regulated in anticipation of failure rather than by peripheral failure alone; still contested.
Neurobiology of muscle fatigue
Enoka & Duchateau — Journal of Applied Physiology / Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise · 2008–2016
Separates central from peripheral contributions to fatigue and defines the interpolated-twitch measurement standard.
Datasets
PhysioNet EMG and fatigue recordings
MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology · free
Open surface-EMG and physiological recordings usable for fatigue analysis.
PubMed neuromuscular fatigue literature
US National Library of Medicine · free
Trials using twitch interpolation, MVC decline, and RPE tracking.
Still open
- How much late-game decline is physiological versus attentional?
- Can mental fatigue be monitored reliably in-season?
- Which fatigue markers predict injury rather than merely follow it?
What we won’t say
We will not call a fourth-quarter collapse 'conditioning' without evidence separating fatigue from scheme and decision quality.
- VO-1Evidence before wit
- VO-2Punch at claims, never at people
- VO-3Say the uncertainty out loud
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