This is the core of your Soma workflow. By the end of this article you will know how to measure mental fatigue, where to fit cognitive work into training, how to prime athletes before key performance, and how to build a plan that actually produces adaptation. The final section walks you through building it inside Soma Analytics step by step.

Work through it in order the first time. Come back to any section as a reference.

Mental fatigue does not show up the way physical fatigue does. It creeps in quietly. Reaction time slows. Decisions become less clean. Focus fades long before the body does.

You cannot rely on what you see or what the athlete says they feel. Mental fatigue must be measured objectively. Soma gives you three tools to do it.

Cognitive load behaves like physical load. Too low and nothing happens. Too high and the system collapses. Just right and the brain adapts.

The goal is not to avoid mental fatigue. It is to use it. Without data, you are guessing. You might underload and see zero improvement, or overload and break cognitive control. Objective data tells you when to push and when to pull back.

A simple reaction test. The athlete reacts as fast and accurately as possible. There is no strategy and nothing to hide behind, which is why even small drops in focus show up immediately.

Three metrics matter. Read them together. Any one alone will mislead you.

The most important metric is lapse count. A lapse is any response slower than 355 milliseconds. Even a small rise in lapses is one of the strongest signals that cognitive fatigue has arrived. Reaction time often shifts only slightly when fatigue first appears, but lapses expose the real breakdown.

Not all fatigue is bad. Healthy fatigue means the session created enough stress to drive adaptation. Unhealthy fatigue means the load exceeded capacity. The response to each is completely different.

Run a PVT-B before and after every session. Pre tells you if the athlete is fresh. Post tells you if the load created adaptation.

When RT, variation, and lapses all flatten across multiple sessions, the athlete has adapted. The session is no longer producing meaningful fatigue. That is the signal to progress.

The Psychomotor Fatigue Threshold Test identifies the point where cognitive performance begins to decline during exercise. It is a three-choice reaction task: tap right for red, tap left for green, do not tap for yellow. Simple rules, which is why it is extremely sensitive to fatigue.

Every PFTT follows the same three phases.

The goal over time is to push the threshold further out. If the athlete holds their peak zone longer before cognitive decline begins, their mental endurance has improved.

Three options. Choose the one that fits your session.

The Rating of Mental Fatigue scale captures how mentally tired the athlete feels after each task. It links automatically to each task in Soma and is best used to confirm how fatigue feels compared to what the data shows. When the RMF and the PVT-B data agree, your read is clean. When they disagree, that mismatch is itself useful information.

Once you can measure cognitive load, decide where Soma fits in the athlete's day. There are four methods. All four work. All four are backed by peer-reviewed research. Each one serves a different purpose.

Applies cognitive load before the workout so the athlete starts physical training already mentally fatigued. This raises the perceived intensity of the physical session without increasing mechanical stress.

Slots 3-minute cognitive tasks between physical sets. The athlete stays mentally engaged during rest rather than drifting. Total cognitive load rises without extending session length.

Cognitive tasks performed during steady cardiovascular work. The athlete must maintain physical output while processing information under fatigue. One of the strongest methods for building mental resilience. Off-season and pre-season only.

Cognitive tasks immediately after the physical session. Trains decision-making under the same tired conditions that appear late in competition. Works all year.

All four methods work. Start simple and build up.

Priming is different from training. The goal is not adaptation over weeks. It is to activate the brain before key performance. Short, sharp cognitive work done as a mental warm-up so the athlete steps into competition already sharp.

Four 3-minute tasks. Around 12 minutes total. Done between warm-up drills, before the main session.

Priming uses tasks that activate rather than fatigue. The most common options are cMSIT, Task Switching, Incongruent Flanker, and Posner. Rotate tasks across sessions to keep the stimulus novel.

Priming should sharpen the athlete, not tire them. Build a short priming baseline so you know how the athlete performs on priming tasks when fresh. If performance starts drifting down over time, priming is accidentally becoming fatiguing and you need to pull back.

This is where everything comes together. You have the measurement tools. You know where cognitive work fits. You know when to prime. Now you build the plan that runs inside that structure.

Every effective plan starts with understanding what the brain needs to improve. You are not choosing random tasks. You are choosing what mental demand to train.

Most athletes benefit from training all four demands. Prioritise the ones most dominant in the athlete's sport, where split-second focus, control, or decision-making matter most.

The task is not what creates adaptation. The load is.

A Flanker, N-Back, Stroop, or PVT-B provides cognitive demand. Different tasks stimulate different parts of the brain. But the task itself does not drive improvement.

A low-load Flanker does nothing. A high-load Flanker creates adaptation. The difference is not the task. It is the load applied to it. You do not need a special task. You need enough load applied to any task.

Tasks provide the stimulus. Load creates the adaptation.

Modes are the fourth load lever and the one that changes how you coach. They let you take any task and increase the load without switching to a new task. Modes add pressure, speed, fatigue, chaos, accountability, or automatic scaling on top of the task.

This matters because cognitive adaptation requires progressive overload. Without modes, the only way to progress is to increase intensity, extend duration, or change tasks entirely. Modes give you a fourth dimension that changes how the brain has to handle the same stimulus.

For your first block, use one mode and stick with it for the full four weeks. Do not stack modes yet. You want to see what is actually driving adaptation.

Three modes work well for beginners.

When you are ready to go further, modes can be picked based on the adaptation you are targeting. Here is the quick-reference grouping. For the full breakdown of each mode with metrics and coach tips, see the separate Full Modes Reference article.

A baseline is a short plan that reveals the athlete's strengths and weaknesses. Around 30 minutes. 3 to 6 tasks (around 4 is ideal to avoid overload).

The baseline is not just for assessment. It is also the reference point you use to confirm whether the athlete adapted at the end of the block. Include some of the same tasks in both the baseline and the training plan so you can compare results accurately.

Two worked examples show how this plays out in practice.

Every sport places different demands on the brain. Some require sustained attention. Others require strong inhibition. Some demand fast decision control under fatigue. The goal is not to test everything randomly. The goal is to test what the sport actually asks the athlete to do.

The baseline confirms which demands are strong and which ones break under load. Once you know this, the plan is built to match those demands. Strong areas are maintained. Weak areas are trained more frequently and with higher cognitive load.

This moves you from guesswork to targeted development. The sport sets the demands. The baseline reveals the weak link. The plan builds capacity exactly where it is needed.

Once the baseline shows where performance breaks, the plan places more load on that weakness. Use a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio across the block. The weak demand is trained more often than the stronger demands.

Two practical ways to apply this. You can design the block so more full sessions focus on the weakness while occasional sessions maintain the strengths. Or you can simply choose more tasks within each session that target the weakness than the strengths. Both work. The goal is the same: the weakness consistently receives more load until it improves.

Once the weak areas improve, the ratio can change. At that point, the plan can shift toward training all demands more evenly if the sport requires balanced development.

Three sessions, repeated across a 4-week block. Intensity adjusts weekly.

Once tasks are selected, adjust the load each week. Two approaches.

Gradually increases demand each week to promote consistent adaptation. Three levers to manipulate.

Alternates load rather than increasing it linearly. Keeps the brain adapting by introducing constant variation. Same three levers, different pattern.

Progressive overload is the cleanest starting point for most first blocks. Undulating works once you know how the athlete responds to load.

Every block follows the same cycle: baseline, build, periodize, analyze, repeat.

The first week often feels messy. That is normal. By week three, adaptation starts. By week four, the athlete has adjusted. Let the plan run. You need at least nine sessions to see a clear trend. Do not keep changing it.

If the load is right, post-session data will show slower RT, lower accuracy, higher variation, and increased lapses. The brain has been pushed enough to adapt.

This step-by-step guide walks you through setup, session design, and plan assignment so you can build effective, data-driven training programs for your athletes.

Give your plan a clear, descriptive name so you can identify it easily later. Select New Plan to start from scratch.

Before adding tasks, set up all your sessions with names, scales, and any tracking features you want to include. Select Add Session to create a new one.

Use a simple naming format such as Baseline, Session 1, Session 2, Session 3. Define how many times each session should repeat. The default is one cycle.

Scales allow athletes to record feedback after each task. The three available scales are Fatigue (RMF), Effort (RME), and Exertion (RPE). Enable Baseline Comparison to automatically generate pre and post-baseline reports. When this feature is turned on, the session cycle automatically changes to two for accurate comparison. You can also activate Minute-on-Minute tracking for detailed performance data within each session.

Once all sessions are ready, begin building the structure of your training plan. Soma allows you to filter tasks by cognitive demand, making the process faster and more efficient. Most athletes will benefit from training all four demands, but prioritise the ones most dominant in their sport where split-second focus, control, or decision-making matter most.

Decide when cognitive work will occur relative to physical training: pre-session, in-session, or post-session. Only the selected placement will appear inside Soma NPT, keeping the athlete's workflow clear. Select Add Drill within a session to insert tasks. Configure each with a duration, intensity level, and mode. The mode adds an extra layer that increases the overall load on top of the task. Repeat this process until the session is complete.

A practical programming approach is to create a small core group of sessions, for example Session 1 to 3, and repeat them each week. Progressively increase the load or apply undulating periodization by adjusting intensity, duration, or frequency across the block.

If you want to analyse baseline data before finalising the plan, set up the session names, add scales, and enable MoM first. After reviewing baseline results, continue building the rest of the plan.

To assign immediately, select Assign Users, choose the athletes to receive the plan, and click Assign. If you want the plan to activate later, select a date and time from the calendar and Soma will assign the plan automatically at that time.

When a new plan is assigned, the athlete must open the Home tab in Soma NPT to refresh the plan list. Once refreshed the new plan will appear automatically. For example, a plan name that updates from Soma 1.0 to Soma 1.1 will only show after the athlete taps the Home tab.

Plans save automatically while you work. Assigned plans appear under Active and unassigned plans appear under Inactive. If you delete a session that has already been completed by one or more athletes, all associated data will be permanently lost. This action cannot be undone.