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 evaluated as a group—not in isolation—because they are deeply interconnected. Improvements in one area often influence the others, and progress across all three provides a clearer picture of true adaptation.
To confirm that the athlete is responding effectively to the current training load, each of the three metrics must improve by at least 5 percent. A combined average of 5 percent across all three is not enough—all three must individually reach or exceed the 5 percent threshold.
What to Do When the Big Three Improve (Over 5%)
Introduce new tasks that specifically target the cognitive demands you’re focusing on.
Increase the intensity and duration of current tasks to drive further adaptation.
Customize new or existing tasks: increase the intensity, duration, or both—or apply specialized training modes to raise the overall cognitive load.
What to Do When There’s Little or No Improvement (Under 5%)
Reuse the current tasks to give the athlete another opportunity to meet the challenge.
Adjust the task variables by:
Increasing the intensity
Extending the duration
Applying specialized training modes to create a more targeted cognitive load
If certain tasks didn’t perform well, look for a pattern. Are the low-performing tasks all targeting the same cognitive demand, or is the difficulty spread across multiple areas? Even if the overall baseline shows solid improvement, dig deeper. Which specific tasks underperformed — and what cognitive demand were they stressing? That’s where the next phase of training should focus.