Understanding how your athlete responds to cognitive training is key to refining performance strategies. While many metrics are available, we focus on the Big Three:
Reaction Time
Variation
Accuracy
These are the most important indicators when evaluating progress.
Why You Should Assess Them Together
These metrics should always be assessed as a group, not in isolation, because they are deeply interconnected. A combined improvement of over 5% across all three signals that the athlete is successfully adapting to the current training load.
What to Do When the Big Three Improve (Over 5%)
If there’s a meaningful improvement in all three metrics:
Introduce new tasks that challenge specific cognitive demands
Increase task intensity and duration to push adaptation further
Apply specialized training modes to increase the overall cognitive load
What to Do When There’s Little or No Improvement (Under 5%)
If improvement is less than 5% or stagnant:
Reuse the current tasks to give the athlete another chance to meet the challenge
Adjust task variables by:
Increasing intensity
Extending duration
Applying specialized training modes to create a more targeted challenge