Research summary · Youth development
School stress relates to perceived effort but not heart-rate load in academy soccer
Thirty-five academy soccer players from under-16 and under-18 teams were monitored daily for half a season. Researchers measured academic stress, mental fatigue, external training load, perceived exertion and a heart-rate-derived training impulse, then analysed repeated observations using multilevel models.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Prospective daily-monitoring cohort study
- Journal
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Population / context
- Academy football · Under-16 and under-18 players
What the publication reports
Higher academic stress and mental fatigue were associated with higher perceived exertion after accounting for external load. Neither significantly predicted the heart-rate-based training impulse in the final models. The two measures therefore captured different aspects of the training experience; a difficult-feeling session was not necessarily accompanied by greater measured cardiovascular load.
Limits and interpretation
This was an observational study in a small academy sample, so it cannot establish that school stress causes higher effort ratings. Perceived stress, fatigue and effort share self-report limitations. Heart-rate impulse is not a complete measure of physiological strain, and the results do not justify treating perceived exertion as erroneous or ignoring it.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Academic stress and mental fatigue predict subjective but not objective internal load in adolescent soccer players-a prospective cohort study
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 41924065DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1770781Full text at the sourceReader discussion
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