Optimising the training environment for athletes is essential to enable them to reach their potential in competition. To achieve this, the training environment needs to mimic many of the aspects of actual competition (i.e. opponents, time pressured decision-making, exercise intensity). The recent development of modern day technology (virtual reality) has opened up a whole new training environment which can be used to replicate the environment of competition, however it is unclear what level of impact this training method can have on performance and training characteristics (biomechanically, psychologically and physiologically).
Research into team sports (Hibbs and O’Donoghue, 2013) has identified the fundamental perceptual-cognitive and motoric mechanisms that underpin skilled decision making. These processes are also particularly relevant when racing against opponents in individual sports, a novel research area (Konings et al., 2020). Yet, athletes often train in isolatory conditions, which may not engender the necessary dynamic underlying conditions that afford ecologically valid decisions to be made (Menting et al., 2019). The recent COVID-19 global pandemic has exacerbated the lack of ecological validity of training and stresses the need to develop performance analysis as well as training opportunities with simultaneously occurring and dynamic perceptual (e.g. recognition of postural cues), motor (e.g. fatigue) and cognitive (e.g. psychological, contextual) factors that will allow effective transfer to performance, as well as impact on training motivations.
The studentship will extend the current knowledge base regarding exercise habits and motivations (Rogerson et al. 2019) and the motivational effect of opponents on cognitive processes such as pacing, training engagement and aggressiveness (Konings et al., 2018; Hettinga et al., 2017). It will create new knowledge with respect to the dynamic conditions that influence human-environment interactions, motivation, tactics and decision making in cycling, and provide a novel enquiry into the utility and efficacy of virtual training environments in elite sport.
Using performance analysis technologies as well as experimental lab studies, the studentship will examine the effects of in-person (e.g. track), synchronous (e.g. live virtual computer opponents) and asynchronous (e.g. computer generated opponent) training modalities on the recognition of decision-making opportunities and motivation in cycling athletes.
The Department of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation at Northumbria University has a strong track record in developing exercise interventions, training regimes and exercise guidelines for a wide range of different populations, varying from persons with chronic conditions to elite athletes, including expertise on behavioural change, motivation and exercise adherence and has use of a fully immersive VR interactive room which can be utilised to explore different VR scenarios, alongside state of the art laboratories to collect and analyse data. We have links with international virtual reality companies which the candidate will work alongside to develop novel training environments.
This is an exciting opportunity to lead a novel and unique research project into the psychological and physiological impact that modern day technology can have in elite training environments.