Mental fatigue quietly chips away at performance.
It slows reaction time, clouds decision-making, and affects coordination and endurance, even when physical performance still looks solid. Athletes might appear focused, but mentally, they could already be running on empty.

That’s why you can’t just rely on what you see or how someone says they feel. You need objective tools that show what’s really going on.

Soma helps you do exactly that with three core tools:

If you only track one thing, track lapse count.

Lapses are delayed reactions caused by mental fatigue. They increase with mental fatigue, even when reaction time or accuracy still looks fine.

Lapse count rises before performance fully drops. That makes it the clearest early sign of cognitive fatigue.

Both tests measure sustained attention and response speed, but they’re structured differently.

Cognitive load is the mental effort needed to complete a task. Just like physical load, it needs to be managed.

The goal is not to avoid mental fatigue. The goal is to track it so you know when to push and when to recover.

If you’re not tracking mental fatigue, you’re flying blind.
You might be:

The sooner you see the data, the sooner you can make smarter decisions.

Mental fatigue load should match the phase of training.

Run a PVT-B test:

What to watch:

Example:

Even though accuracy stayed perfect, the higher lapse count and variation show the session pushed cognitive capacity.

Track PVT-B results over 3 to 4 weeks to establish an athlete’s personal baseline.

The PFTT (Psychomotor Fatigue Threshold Test) shows when cognitive performance starts to decline during physical exercise.

What you’ll see:

Example:

This helps you design training that either holds athletes in their sweet spot or intentionally pushes them past it to build resilience.

The RMF (Rating of Mental Fatigue) is a quick post-task check-in.

After a cognitive task, the athlete rates how mentally fatigued they feel. It’s useful for:

It’s built into Soma and automatically links to the training data.

Mental fatigue often hides in plain sight, but tracking it doesn’t have to be complicated. The best place to start is with lapse count on the PVT-B. It’s fast to collect, easy to interpret, and gives you the clearest signal that the brain is starting to slow down.

From there, you can build a fuller picture. Use the PFTT to identify when cognitive performance begins to decline during physical training. Add the RMF scale to capture how the athlete feels after each task. Together, these tools help you track mental fatigue with precision.

When you monitor cognitive fatigue the same way you track physical output, you stop guessing. You start making better training decisions based on the whole athlete.

Yes, absolutely. While the PFTT was originally developed to detect the point where an athlete crosses the psychomotor fatigue threshold, it is also sensitive enough to track general mental fatigue.

This makes it a great option when:

The PFTT only takes 90 seconds and can be used both before and after a training session. It gives you fast, objective insight into how the brain is responding, especially when longer tasks like the PVT-B aren’t ideal.

If compliance is low or the data from PVT-B isn’t usable, the PFTT gives you a practical and effective alternative. The goal is not to force one tool, but to get the clearest picture of mental fatigue so you can adjust training in real time.

It depends on the athlete’s baseline, but generally:

Yes, but keep it short and engaging. PVT-B and PFTT are safe, scalable, and non-invasive. Use variation and lapse count as your key metrics. The younger the athlete, the more mental fatigue tends to affect attention and consistency rather than raw speed.