“This is a different café” – The qualitative exploration of fatigue within a professional basketball team

In competitive sports, elite athletes and support staff invest considerable physical and mental effort to achieve continuous performance improvement, which, inevitably, may lead to fatigue. This qualitative study aims to gain in-depth insight into the experiences of the members of one professional, adult male basketball team, including the performance support team, about the fatigue they encounter and about how team members form their understanding of it. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen participants: eight basketball players and five performance support team (PST) members (i.e., head coach, assistant coach, conditioning coach, performance analyst, and physiotherapist). A reflexive thematic analysis was performed. Four main themes were constructed in relation to fatigue: 1) “This is a different café” (expectation for fatigue management/suppression in professional sport); 2) “You’re leading them, but you're one of them” (coaches' dual role and its influence on their objectivity); 3) “The way you train, the way you play” (attitudes concerning training sessions and its assumed influence on matches) and 4) “The killer instinct” (association between fatigue management and mental weakness). Findings indicate that both internal and external expectations were perceived to influence the athletes’ and the staff’s effort, workload, and their response to signs of fatigue. The present study provides insight into the perception and the dynamics of fatigue in the context of professional team sport. The findings underline the complex nature of training routines, playing time at matches, and athletes’ efforts, as well as the dynamics of the interactions between the fatigue of the PST members and athletes and between training sessions and games.