Building a Cognitive Fitness Framework for Athletes

Cognitive Fitness Framework (CF2) by Dr. Eugene Aidman (click image for source paper)

While we wait patiently for sports to return to our TVs, there is a new realization that world-class athletes are humans, too. Like us, they have the same vulnerabilities to not only viruses but also to the psychological stresses of this new world. Granted, they can ponder this new reality from nicer digs than most of us but they re-enter their workplace needing to shake off the cobwebs, both physically and mentally. The stark, slightly bizarre world of empty stadiums will present a new challenge to their cognitive familiarity with the high stakes, crowd-infused adrenaline of gameday. 

With team training resuming for many leagues around the world, athletes are increasing their physical fitness levels back up to in-season form. Well-known data metrics, like heart rate, speed, and power, are being uploaded and summarized by performance trainers and scrutinized by coaches. But, mentally, where is the team at? Are they cognitively as sharp as they were two months ago? Are they thinking about family members or friends? How has this new pattern of living affected their brain? 

Of course, team psychologists will have discussions with players, when needed, to address any concerns that they bring forward. Yet, it would benefit players and the team if there was a standardized framework for assessing their overall readiness to endure the battle on the field, in other words, their cognitive fitness. On top of physical capabilities, the variables of anticipation, awareness, perception and decision-making often determine the outcome of a game. 

It turns out that the Australian Army is pursuing the same answers. They needed to know the cognitive preparedness of their fighting force to respond to a conflict at a moment’s notice. Certainly, their battlefield is drastically different than an athlete’s but the need to “train above the neck” is closely related. So, they called on Dr. Eugene Aidman, a performance psychologist affiliated with the University of Sydney and the University of Newcastle.

“We study cognitive performance, in the lab and in the field, of both individuals and teams,” said Dr. Aidman in an interview. “And more importantly, we study the cognitive fitness underpinning that.”

Just as with athletes, each solider is a unique individual who brings a different set of cognitive strengths and weaknesses to their job. Being able to assess and train these skills in a customized program is the mission of the Cognitive Gym, a set of mental exercises similar to a workout plan for the brain. It is the practical tool based on an overall framework that Dr. Aidman developed, which he calls the Cognitive Fitness Framework (CF2). 

Using the gold standard processes of physical training, “isolate-overload-overrecover”, the Cognitive Gym aims to improve “trainable cognitive primaries” like attention, executive control, task-switching and decision-making. Once deemed cognitively fit, a soldier is advanced to mission-ready training which includes tolerance to battle stresses like pain, sleep loss, surprise and uncertainty, as well as resistance to risks such as distraction, deception and manipulation. 

While engaged in a mission, CF2 switches to operational performance issues like fatigue countermeasures, decision aids, and cognitive monitoring. Post-operation, the soldier engages in recovery modes of sleep monitoring, meditation, nutrition and social support.

“This is going to end up being the critical skillset for the solider of the future and within that decision-making space we’re also beginning to work on their decision biases and their confidence calibration,” said Dr. Aidman in an interview for the Defense Science and Technology Outlook.

In a recent paper in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Dr. Aidman presented CF2 as a bridge between existing research in cognitive readiness (CR) and mental fitness (MF)  to “examine these causal connections between CR and cognitive factors underpinning mental health to develop a more tractable and systemic approach to the assessment and training of high-performance cognition.”

In the race to find the perfect solution for soldiers, first-responders, or athletes, CF2 is a welcome top-down approach to outline not just the “how-to” but start first with the “what” and “why” of cognitive training. With many technology-driven apps in the marketplace that claim to increase an athlete’s brain functioning, including useful transfer to their sport, the solutions are getting ahead of the research. We recommend that coaches and parents of developing athletes always ask these app vendors for the peer-reviewed research that shows how their training technology has specifically improved the underlying cognitive skills in their sport.

In fact, Dr. Aidman labels CF2 as a “working hypothesis mapping out the research agenda to identify and measure key attributes of CF, underpinning both real-time cognitive performance under challenging conditions and the resilience that enables career longevity and life-long thriving.” 

There is plenty of work ahead to understand how the brain operates under pressure and time constraints. Dr. Len and I merely scratched the surface in our book, The Playmaker’s Advantage, but we hope that it ignited conversation and questions among coaches and parents that experts like Dr. Aidman are helping to answer.