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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DollarD" data-source="post: 8461404" data-attributes="member: 7024789">Good point! And I did! And it's not as clear cut as you make it out to be...Here's a recent review of studies on the effects of Mental Fatigue on Physical Performance:<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-016-0672-0" target="_blank">The Effects of Mental Fatigue on Physical Performance: A Systematic Review</a>The general finding was a decline in endurance performance (decreased time to exhaustion and self-selected power output/velocity or increased completion time) associated with a higher than normal perceived exertion.Here's another one that doesn't require payment to read the entire review:<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5126404/" target="_blank">Fatigue Induced by Physical and Mental Exertion Increases Perception of Effort and Impairs Subsequent Endurance Performance</a>Consequently, it seems clear that fatigue induced by mental exertion decreases endurance performance, even if prior mental exertion does not alter physiological responses to endurance exercise.I feel D&D is not so close to "vegging on the couch watching a movie", but your kilometrage may vary. And as noted above, "mental exertion does not alter physiological responses." So, yes, it does not alter the body's energy budget. In any case, a reading of the above does substantiate your case with regards to certain biological aspects, as noted above.Specifically:First, the impact of physical and mental exertion on force production capacity is presented, with specific emphasize on the fact that solely physical exertion and not mental exertion induces a decrease in force production capacity of the working muscles.However, they do note:All these studies reached a consensus on the negative impact of prior mental exertion on endurance performance; even so elite athletes present a greater resistance to fatigue induced by prior mental exertion. This impairment was observed during cycling and running exercises. Interestingly, Smith and colleagues demonstrated that fatigue induced by mental exertion also impairs prolonged intermittent and graded running exercises. Consequently, it seems clear that fatigue induced by mental exertion decreases endurance performance, even if prior mental exertion does not alter physiological responses to endurance exercise.So you are correct that physiologically, there appears to be no reason that mental exertion should affect performance. And yet studies have shown that it does. Why?Therefore, these results raise a simple question: do physical exertion and mental exertion alter a common variable during subsequent endurance exercise? The answer is yes. This variable altered by both physical exertion and mental exertion is the perception of effort.[...]While the increased perceived exertion in presence of fatigue of a muscle group involved in subsequent endurance exercise is associated with an increase in activity of cortical premotor and motor areas (i.e., index of central motor command) to compensate for alteration of neuromuscular properties of the working muscles; the underlying mechanisms behind the increased perceived exertion induced by fatigue of a muscle group non-involved in subsequent endurance exercise and fatigue induced by mental exertion remain unclear.[...]An alternative hypothesis could be that prior prolonged activation of premotor and motor areas associated with the completion of the fatiguing exercise would induce intrinsic changes in the brain, inducing an alteration of the activation of premotor and motor areas in the subsequent exercise. [..] Therefore, future studies should investigate the underlying mechanisms responsible of the increased perception of effort during exercise and caused by prior physical and mental exertion.Seems like it is going to require more study...You might very well be right about that. But as the studies showed:All these studies reached a consensus on the negative impact of prior mental exertion on endurance performance; even so elite athletes present a greater resistance to fatigue induced by prior mental exertion.Maybe they're onto something?However, for the purposes of a competition, a win condition can be set for a specific scenario, couldn't it? I rather imagine something similiar has been done at a Con somewhere?I rather suspected you wouldn't, based on the above.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f923.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":ROFLMAO:" title="ROFL    :ROFLMAO:"  data-smilie="18"data-shortname=":ROFLMAO:" />You certainly do make discussion interesting, Umbran. Making me cite sources for what was intended to be a humorous statement, lol. Thank you.Now I've learned a bit more as well. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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