Increased Cognitive Demands Affect Agility Performance in Female Athletes - Implications for Testing and Training of Agility in Team Ball Sports

Agility, a key component of team ball sports, describes an athlete´s ability to move fast in response to changing environments. While agility requires basic cognitive functions like processing speed, it also requires more complex cognitive processes like working memory and inhibition. Yet, most agility tests restrict an assessment of cognitive processes to simple reactive times that lack ecological validity. Our aim in this study was to assess agility performance by means of total time on two agility tests with matched motor demands but with both low and high cognitive demands. We tested 22 female team athletes on SpeedCourt, using a simple agility test (SAT) that measured only processing speed and a complex agility test (CAT) that required working memory and inhibition. We found excellent to good reliability for both our SAT (ICC = .79) and CAT (ICC =.70). Lower agility performance on the CAT was associated with increased agility total time and split times (p < .05). These results demonstrated that agility performance depends on the complexity of cognitive demands. There may be interference-effects between motor and cognitive performances, reducing speed when environmental information becomes more complex. Future studies should consider agility training models that implement complex cognitive stimuli to challenge athletes according to competitive demands. This will also allow scientists and practitioners to tailor tests to talent identification, performance development and injury rehabilitation.