Effects of Structured Psychological Recovery Interventions on Training Fatigue and Motivation in Taekwondo Students: A Single Group Pre-Post Study

Abstract

Background: Repetitive taekwondo training produces Training Fatigue (TF), cognitive and emotional depletion from overexposure to routine practice. Structured in-session psychological recovery interventions to address this remain largely untested in martial arts. Purpose: To evaluate the effects of breathwork, guided visualization, and micro-breaks on training fatigue, intrinsic motivation, and perceived stress in adult taekwondo students over 4 weeks. Method: A single-group pre-post design was employed. Thirty adults (23 male, 7 female; M = 22.27 years, SD = 2.49, range = 18–26) from a Bangalore taekwondo academy received a 3–5-minute recovery activity at session start across 4 weeks. Outcomes were measured at baseline (Week 0) and post-intervention (Week 4) using the PSS-10, SMS-II intrinsic motivation subscale, and the Training Fatigue Scale (TFS), an 8-item scale developed for this study. Shapiro-Wilk tests determined test selection; analyses used paired t-tests, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, and Spearman correlation. Results: Training fatigue did not decrease significantly, t(29) = 1.03, p = .313, d = 0.19 (H1 not supported). Intrinsic motivation increased significantly, W = 64.00, p = .023, d = 0.44 (H2 supported). Perceived stress decreased significantly, W = 51.00, p = .007, d = 0.37. Fatigue-motivation correlation was weak and non-significant, ρ = −0.204, p = .280. TFS internal consistency was acceptable (α = .80, .78). Conclusion: The intervention improved motivation and stress but did not reduce training fatigue within 4 weeks. Brief recovery activities function as motivational primers rather than fatigue-reduction tools over short intervention windows.