Impact of an exergame intervention on cognitive-motor functions and training experience in young team sports athletes: a non-randomized controlled trial.

Introduction: Team sports athletes need excellent perceptual-cognitive skills, particularly executive functions (EF) to strategically perform on the field. The transfer effect of cognitive training might be accomplished by the inclusion of cognitive stimuli into a physically active environment as these couplings are required in real game situations. A training approach that combines both components is exergaming. The primary objective of this study was to gain preliminary insights into the effects of exergaming on cognitive-motor functions in young team sports athletes. The secondary objective was to investigate participants' training experience and well-being over time.

Methods: Participants were assigned to the intervention or control group. In the intervention group, participants trained with the ExerCube-a mixed reality exergame. The training was planned for 10 weeks (two sessions per week à 25 min) but had to be shortened by 2 weeks due to COVID-19 restrictions. The control group had no additional training. Outcomes included a computer-based alertness test and a cognitive-motor test battery to assess different EF (flexibility, divided attention, and inhibition) via a FitLight Trainer setup.

Results: Twenty-four athletes [mean age (±SD) 15.0 ± 0.7 years], evenly split into the intervention group ( = 12; male  = 6; female  = 6; 14.7 ± 0.5 years) and the control group ( = 12; male  = 7; female  = 5; 15.3 ± 0.8 years), participated in the study. Participants in the intervention group performed on average 9.4 ± 3.3 training sessions over 8 weeks. Significant time x group interaction effects were evident for the cognitive-motor sub-tests flexibility ( = 12.176,  < 0.001,  = 1.488) and divided attention for auditive stimuli ( = 9.776,  = 0.002,  = 1.404) in favour of the intervention group. For the alertness test, a medium effect size (time x group interaction) was seen for the variability of the reaction time ( = 2.196,  = 0.138,  = 0.632) in favour of the intervention group. Training experience and well-being were consistently at medium to high levels.

Conclusion: The ExerCube training yielded positive effects on concentration, flexibility, and divided attention indicating that exergaming can be an innovative training approach for team sports athletes.