Fatigue can be defined as any exercise-induced reduction in the ability to exert muscle force or power, regardless of whether or not the task can be sustained (Gandevia, 2001). There is no doubt that in sports performance where time to completion is the outcome measure, the management of fatigue is probably the determining factor of success. However, in exercise physiology, interventions and mechanisms have traditionally be measured using time to exhaustion tasks, where "the point of fatigue" occurs at task failure. The problem with this approach is that in sports performance, tasks are self-paced, and therefore in a successful performance, task failure (and thus the traditional concept of fatigue) never actually occurs. Therefore, which mechanisms govern fatigue in task failure, and which mechanisms govern work rate regulation (and thus the management of the process of fatigue) are very different constructs, which should not be used synonymously.
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