Self-control exertion and goal priming: Effects on time-to-exhaustion cycling performance.

Interventions to attenuate the negative effects of prior self-control exertion on physical performance are limited.The current study had three primary objectives: a) to investigate whether prior self-control exertion reduces subsequent performance on a time-toexhaustion (TTE) cycling task, b) to investigate if goal priming attenuated the detrimental effects of self-control depletion on subsequent physical performance, c) to examine the potential for any observed performance decrements to be explained by changes in perceptions of pain and motivation.Fourteen recreationally active males (23 ± 3 years) completed three TTE cycling tasks at 80% V ̇O2 peak on an electromagnetically braked cycle ergometer.Prior to each TTE cycling task, participants completed a self-control depletion condition (incongruent Stroop task) or a non-self-control depletion condition (congruent Stroop task) for 4 min.During the TTE cycling task, participants were asked to watch a video on the screen in front of them.During this video, participants were exposed to a goal priming sequence (intervention condition) or a random letter sequence (control condition).The participants' TTE cycling task performance time, subjective measures, and cycling cadence were recorded every 3 min during the TTE task.A one-way repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that there was no significant difference in TTE cycling task performance between the experimental conditions (p = 0.28).Furthermore, there were no significant changes in perceptions of pain (p = 0.36) or motivation (p = 0.21).The findings indicate that prior selfcontrol exertion did not negatively affect subsequent TTE cycling task performance.In addition, goal priming does not influence the effects of initial self-control exertion on subsequent physical task performance.