Athletic Performance in Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract. Background: In a goalkeeping task that entailed intercepting fast-approaching balls, the present research examined whether training under conditions more intense than those of a subsequent test yields a performance improvement. Methods: Fifty participants (38 males) carried out the goalkeeping task in two conditions: In the progressive-intensity condition, participants carried out three training sessions with increasing intensity (i.e., balls shot at increasingly faster speeds) that exceeded that of a pretest and a posttest; in the fixed-intensity condition, participants also carried out three training conditions but at a fixed intensity equal to that of both the pretest and the posttest. Results: Performance in the goalkeeping task improved from pretest to posttest equally under the two intensity conditions. Similarly, performance on a different task that required fast responses to visual targets also increased from pretest to posttest, likewise equally for the two intensity conditions. Conclusions: Overall, these results challenge the common belief in sports that more intense training than a subsequent test is beneficial for performance.