In the broad range of definitions related to higher cognition, executive functions are identified as a group of capacities crucial for conscious and directed behavior control toward achieving specific goals (Diamond, 2013). These functions are essential for overcoming cognitive challenges in sports environments by facilitating the coordination between thought and action to achieve adaptive goals (Bravi et al., 2022). The study of the interaction between sports practice and cognitive functions promises not only to identify and enhance athletic talent (Scharfen and Memmert, 2019), but also to evaluate specific sports as potential interventions to enhance cognitive abilities in individuals with cognitive impairments, benefiting both young people and older adults (Tsai, 2009).

The inhibitory component of executive functions involves the ability to selectively concentrate on achieving a goal while ignoring distracting stimuli (Miyake et al., 2000). This component is particularly relevant in the sports domain (Liao et al., 2017), especially in interaction sports characterized by high levels of uncertainty (Swann et al., 2015), where it is crucial to control emotions and impulses. Recent research suggests that inhibition processes should be considered a set of functions rather than a single construct. Despite the various classifications proposed for the different inhibitory abilities, there is a consensus on distinguishing two main types: interference control “or perceptual inhibition” and response inhibition. The main difference between the two is that they address different manifestations of inhibitory responding: executing the response in the face of distractor stimuli (Flanker task) or not initiating any response -impulse control- (Go-Nogo) (Xie et al., 2017). Although many authors also include cognitive inhibition, such as the suppression of previously active rules in working memory in order to focus on new rules and apply them effectively, several psychometric studies suggest that this ability to change can be considered a distinct executive function (Miyake et al., 2000).

Evidence of a bidirectional interaction between inhibitory control (IC) and physical exercise (PE) exists. Most recent interventional studies (the only ones allowing causality) found a positive effect of PE on IC (Browne et al., 2016; Ludyga et al., 2019; Shigeta et al., 2021). Only one study published in the last decade failed to replicate this effect (Williams et al., 2020), and a few cases reported no effects (Lind et al., 2019). When the studies compare sports intervention with no-sport conditions, a positive effect on IC could be seen in basketball, football, and badminton (Cooper et al., 2018; Lind et al., 2019; Takahashi and Grove, 2019, 2020; Wen et al., 2021). Interaction sports are characterized by abundant dynamic and constantly changing stimuli, which demand continuous regulation and adaptation. The results of a recent meta-analysis support the cognitive stimulation hypothesis, which has been proposed to explain the different temporal effects observed on cognitive performance after a single session of various activities or sports. Albaladejo-Garcia et al. (2023) found sufficient evidence to support the notion that participation in activities that demand greater cognitive effort leads to more significant adaptations in response inhibition ability. Athletes undergo physical and mental exertion during practice that requires them to monitor several cognitive processes, including focusing attention on specific cues, ignoring distractions in their environment (Laaksonen et al., 2018), and managing relevant versus irrelevant cognitive functions (Jamro et al., 2022). This effect of PE may be mediated by different factors, such as the type of activity, both quantitative (volume, intensity, density) and qualitative (continuity of exercise, conditional quality involved, and requirements) (Gutiérrez-Capote et al., 2024).

However, some issues still need to be clarified. In contrast to the cognitive benefits of a single aerobic/sports exercise session, some studies find mental fatigue-induced impairment (Dong et al., 2022). Maintaining prolonged physical exertion hurts IC (Ferreira et al., 2024), reducing activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Ishii et al., 2014). On the other hand, exposure to the high demands of cognitive challenge experienced by the athlete during competition may decrease his or her decision-making performance, and in which IC appears to mediate (Smith et al., 2016). Cognitive-motor interference can explain this impairment (McIsaac et al., 2018). The simultaneous performance of cognitive and motor demands to which the athlete is subjected generates competition for available neural resources, leading to decreased performance in both modalities. However, studies on the chronic effect of dual-task practice have shown increased motor and cognitive performance. A recent systematic review found an acute adverse effect of dual tasks on the cognitive performance of athletes and, in turn, a benefit after training (chronic effect) with dual tasks (Moreira et al., 2021). The lack of control and monitoring of the acute effect generated by the mental load of each session of the intervention programs to investigate its relationship with the cumulative effect over time has prevented knowing what level of stimulation is required in each session to produce the desired long-term effects. From the field of sports training, it is well known that adaptations are produced through a process of supercompensation, in which it is necessary to apply a stimulus that depletes the athlete’s resources so that the adaptive mechanisms are activated, which would generate an increase in their response capacity in such environments. An acute adverse effect on cognitive performance could activate the adaptive mechanisms to increase the athlete’s resources of this type if temporary exposure to such environments is maintained.

Therefore, we hypothesize that the mental load of the task, generated by its level of complexity, determines the positive or negative effect on subsequent cognitive performance. Previous research conducted by Gutiérrez-Capote et al. (2023) found that by introducing difficulties through practice variability and using restrictions (motor, temporal, and spatial), players experienced an increased mental load and decreased motor performance. This type of practice succeeded in keeping participants at an optimal level of challenge (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004). Furthermore, the effects found were moderated by previous basketball experience and the inhibition ability of the starting player, both their capacity for interference and response inhibition. Based on this background, we propose as the second hypothesis of our study that the initial experience level of the subjects modulates the magnitude of the effects.

This study aimed to examine the acute effects of sports practice on the inhibitory control of healthy young individuals. The findings revealed that altering task complexity by imposing restrictions (motor, temporal, and spatial restrictions) had an acute impact on participants’ inhibitory capability. Engaging in specific and routine basketball training exercises immediately enhanced the capacity for inhibition. Conversely, engaging in more challenging tasks led to a decline in this capacity. Our study revealed that players’ inhibitory control was influenced by the difficulty level of the training tasks, resulting in contrasting effects depending on the dose. These outcomes support our first hypothesis, suggesting that the level of complexity in the tasks undertaken by players determines whether there will be a positive or negative impact on their response inhibition and interference control.

When participants performed Regular Practice (REG), the result replicates the beneficial effect observed in ecological contexts in inhibitory control following a single sports bout (complex skills) compared to simple exercise without cognitive requirements (Takahashi and Grove, 2019, 2020).

According to our results, the complexity of a task influences cognitive load. Specifically, cognitively challenging exercise requiring bodily coordination demands additional cognitive effort. The more complex the task, the more significant cognitive effort is required from the individual (Paas et al., 2003). Our findings of reduced reaction time in both cognitive tasks after REG compared to the baseline state suggest that executive control was engaged during REG and that the ability to activate this control extended into the post-game period. However, the effect only persisted during the initial block. Beyond this period, reaction time levels returned to their baseline state. The acute effects of sports, involving complex motor tasks and high cognitive demands, may benefit from stimuli that pre-activate brain regions that control higher-order cognitive processes, potentially enhancing executive function (Tomporowski et al., 2015). Consequently, as evidenced by inhibitory control results, participants could process contextual information more efficiently and rapidly (Paschen et al., 2019).

On the other hand, adverse effects were also observed in the experimental condition of Restricted Practice (RES). Engagement in more challenging tasks with higher cognitive load, achieved through the imposition of restrictions (i.e., motor, temporal, and spatial), led to a decrease in inhibitory control. Specifically, unlike the REG condition, our findings regarding response accuracy in the Go-Nogo and Flanker tasks after practice, showed a significant player’s accuracy reduction compared with baseline performance. This deterioration is frequently observed in studies that have tailored specific tasks to accommodate the demands of various sports, thereby investigating the repercussions of mental fatigue on cognitive abilities (Filipas et al., 2021; Fortes et al., 2023). For instance, Slimani et al. (2018) demonstrated that mental fatigue had a detrimental effect on selective attention in concentration tasks. Mental fatigue reduces the ability to suppress irrelevant information, leading participants to increasingly base their decision-making on irrelevant information, resulting in lower response accuracy (Faber et al., 2012).

As a task becomes more complex, it may demand greater attentional resources from the individual, leading to increased mental effort (Dudley et al., 2021). However, there is a limit beyond which the increase in cognitive load can overwhelm the information processing system’s capacity, negatively affecting motor performance and the ability to handle additional tasks or respond to unforeseen situations (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004). Therefore, attempting to execute the task effectively results in an immediate decrease in cognitive performance (Salihu et al., 2022).

These effects can be elucidated by the relationship between the practice of physical-cognitive exercise and enhanced top-down processing in the prefrontal cortex (Lucia et al., 2023). Physical-cognitive tasks drive inhibition by bolstering the modulation of neural processes involved in conflict monitoring (Patelaki et al., 2023). This processing is associated with a proactive type of cognitive control, whereas bottom-up processing is linked to a reactive type of control (Braver, 2012). Attention control studies suggest that difficulties in proactive control may exist in different environments and populations (Li et al., 2017). In conditions of high cognitive load, deactivation has been observed in cortical areas associated with the cognitive control network that supports top-down behavior control (Mansouri et al., 2009). On the contrary, when examining acute effects during physical tasks with cognitive demands, participants who achieve benefits in their inhibitory capacity demonstrate a more proactive cognitive strategy (Patelaki et al., 2023).

The overall task context, including its demands and characteristics, is crucial in modulating proactive or reactive control strategies (Skau et al., 2021). For instance, the readiness potential (also called the Bereitschaftspotential or the premotor potential), a component of event-related potentials (ERP) extensively investigated in proactive control, is influenced by the complexity of the motor task (Colebatch, 2007). Increasing task difficulty due to increased temporal or spatial constraints may hinder proactive motor control by diminishing the player’s capacity for interference anticipation (Braver et al., 2007). The Flanker and Go-Nogo tasks necessitate proactive control that could assist participants in foreseeing conflict following Incongruent or Nogo trials and preparing to halt motor responses (Liebrand et al., 2018). The extra mental effort exerted during RES could imply a shift in the type of cognitive control. In this context, it is crucial to recognize that fatigued individuals tend to employ reactive cognitive control (Brick et al., 2016; Skau et al., 2021). Therefore, our speculation is substantiated by this observation, emphasizing that subjects, when fatigued, tend to opt for reactive control over proactive control.

To conclude, the player’s response would be influenced by two specific thresholds: one promoting proactive control and another impeding it. Surpassing the first threshold would enhance cognitive performance, as benefits would be activated by stimulating physical and cognitive activity with a moderate or vigorous load. However, sustaining this load over time could lead to volume-induced fatigue or increased difficulty, representing the second threshold. Surpassing this second threshold would induce an acute deterioration in cognitive performance. Thus, it is crucial to distinguish between the threshold that fosters benefits and the threshold that leads to deterioration, providing a clearer understanding of the relationship between the two. As outlined, these thresholds could be susceptible to environmental changes, such as tasks involving both physical and cognitive demands. Initially, both physical and cognitive load during RES may facilitate a shift from a more reactive to a more proactive control (Kamijo and Masaki, 2016), reverting to a reactive state again due to increased environmental demands surpassing proactive control’s resources, as it is more costly and much more challenging to implement. This phenomenon has been observed in populations with fewer resources, such as older adults or children (Chevalier et al., 2012).

Finally, this study analyzed the possible influence of the players’ sports experience on the relationship between the task’s difficulty and their subsequent cognitive performance. The results showed the moderating effect of playing experience in attenuating the effect of increasing task difficulty on inhibitory control. Those players with more experience perceived fewer mental demands (Gutiérrez-Capote et al., 2023), translating into better results in their cognitive performance in the RES. Within the context of the optimal challenge framework, it is established that the functional difficulty of a task, in addition to being affected by experience and practice conditions, also depends on individual processing characteristics (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004). This idea finds support in various research on elite athletes, which indicates that highly skilled athletes exhibit more efficient inhibitory control than semi-professional and amateur-level athletes (Hagyard et al., 2021). Consequently, a close relationship between the players’ cognitive and athletic performance must be considered. However, future interventional research should check the direction of such a relationship. Although our results claim to be cautious, it could be that for the most experienced players the perception of the mental load required is lower when performing tasks, and, therefore, they could need fewer cognitive resources to perform them (Yu et al., 2019). Understanding this directional relationship could help design strategies to improve athletes’ cognitive performance.

The mixed results on inhibitory control offer a novel perspective to interpret the dose–response effects on cognitive performance produced by increasing nominal task difficulty. However, these results should be treated with caution. Studies showing positive effects of physical exercise (PE) on inhibitory control usually compare entirely different activities (Benzing et al., 2016) and suffer from controlling for the degree of physical and mental task load through some external measure. On the other hand, studies showing the adverse effects of PE practice are limited, and it is not easy to establish a causal relationship between the results (see Egger et al. (2018)). Moreover, in their interventions, the definition of the quantitative aspects of the tasks is very disparate, and individualized adaptation was not performed.

However, the value of the results reveals the need for such an adjustment. While these environments may initially result in less adaptive behavior with more errors in the short term, challenging and practice-friendly training environments have been found to facilitate learning in the long term (Frömer, 2016). These early-stage errors could provide an essential means of stimulating an individual’s adaptive capacity (Turakhia et al., 2021). Unfortunately, the design of our study does not allow us to contrast whether the acute adverse effect of cognitively more demanding practice (RES) on cognitive performance could revert to long-term benefits if these stimuli were repeated over time. Future studies should investigate the relationship between the acute and chronic effects to draw reliable conclusions.

Despite finding evidence on the positive and negative effects of complexity in a task-restricted session on inhibitory control, the present study has some limitations. First, the sample size in each experience group is small and, in addition, we decided to present the results of the male and female participants together. This limitation highlights the need for a larger number of participants and the need for additional studies that can replicate these findings. However, it is essential to note that linear mixed model analysis (LMMs) was chosen for two main reasons to control for this limitation. First, it is the most appropriate approach for studies with multiple repeated measures (Meteyard and Davies, 2020). Second, this type of analysis can mitigate the limitations of having a small sample size. Since mixed effects analysis involves comparing models based on their AIC, this bears some similarity to Bayesian principles (Bozdogan, 1987). Moreover, Bayesian methods can provide meaningful results even with small samples by integrating prior information and updating beliefs with the arrival of new data. This feature is precious in contexts where data is scarce or costly (Schmid and Stanton, 2019).

Second, we tried to homogenize the level of difficulty that players would experience by facing, within each group, participants with similar skill levels in the 1 × 1 tasks. However, in the groups of less experienced players, a more in-depth evaluation would have been necessary due to the presence of participants coming from other sports disciplines, who could have had some advantage due to the transfer of learning. Finally, the availability of studies that address PE or sports interventions and report adverse effects is minimal. This paucity of research that comprehensively details and analyzes the potential adverse effects of physical activity poses a challenge to obtaining enlightening conclusions.

Future research should study the effect of learning in this type of practice. In addition, it would be interesting to study whether the short-term benefits or deterioration of cognition due to sports practice (acute effect) are reflected in the long term (chronic effect). For this purpose, it would be advisable to develop longitudinal studies in which the training loads of each session would be monitored (Perrey, 2022). In this way, evaluating the true long-term impact of stimuli that generate a post-session cognitive benefit would be possible concerning those that momentarily deteriorate cognitive performance. This would open the possibility of analyzing the cognitive development and skills acquired through sports practice, manifesting in allocating resources to improve the athlete’s adaptive capacity. Exploring how practice conditions that generate greater cognitive and emotional involvement influence their subsequent cognitive performance is also interesting.

Our findings provide a different perspective on the interaction between the complexity of an acute exercise task and subsequent cognitive performance outcomes. By introducing restrictions that modify the complexity, participants faced additional challenges, resulting in a temporary deterioration in the player’s inhibitory capacity, persisting even after a 15-min recovery period. This study highlights the importance of initial levels of sports experience as significant moderators of the observed effects, thus providing a more accurate understanding of the complex interplay between exercise-induced cognitive load and its impact on cognitive performance. These aspects are essential to enhance the development of inhibitory control and test the tasks’ functionality. In this sense, these approaches will help to adapt the tasks’ difficulty according to each athlete’s sports experience, providing an optimal challenge that favors the cognitive and adaptive growth of the players (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004).

In terms of practical applications, these perspectives can benefit professionals in various fields, such as sports, education, recreation, or wellness, since the practitioner’s observation of performance dynamics on a training task can help identify the difficulty level to stimulate the athletes’ performance conservation (practice to maintain) or the performance improvement (practice to learn).

The data that supports the findings of this study and the R code used are available in Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25772268.v1. The data is openly accessible and can be viewed online for free.

The studies involving humans were approved by Ethical Committee on Human Research of the University of Granada (3616/CEIH/2023). The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

AG-C: Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. IM: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. FA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. ET: Data curation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. JJ-M: Data curation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. DC: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.