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. 2025 Aug 8;25(9):e70035. doi: 10.1002/ejsc.70035

The Role of Mental Detachment in the Management of Mental Fatigue in High Level Ice Hockey Players: The Mediating Role of Sleep Quality

Nathan Descôtes 1,2, Yannick Balk 3, Jérôme Perez 4, Julien Brugniaux 2, Monique Mendelson 2, Sandrine Isoard‐Gautheur 1,✉
PMCID: PMC12333621  PMID: 40779396

ABSTRACT

During the regular season, elite athletes have an intensive schedule that includes training and competitions. In France's top ice hockey league, players take part in approximately 80 games and around 200 training sessions. This unique context imposes various challenges, including cognitive and emotional demands. Prolonged exposure to these demands requires significant effort, which can eventually become unsustainable and result in negative effects, such as mental fatigue. Thus, implementing strategies to prevent and manage mental fatigue is crucial. Athletes commonly employ strategies, such as mental detachment and adequate sleep to combat fatigue, recognizing these as fundamental components of recovery. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue in elite ice hockey players. In addition, this study investigated the mediating effect of sleep quality on this relationship. During seven consecutive days, 38 ice hockey players completed daily questionnaires assessing their sleep quality, psychological detachment, and mental fatigue. A linear fixed effect regression model with mediation analysis revealed that mental detachment and sleep quality significantly and negatively predicted the level of mental fatigue. Moreover, results revealed that mental detachment positively predicted sleep quality. Finally, results also revealed a significant mediating effect of sleep quality on the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue. These findings shed light on the importance of training and recovery strategies for managing mental fatigue through sufficient sleep and mental detachment.

Keywords: emotional and cognitive detachment, emotional and cognitive fatigue, sleep quality, sport

Key Points

  • Mental detachment significantly improves sleep quality in elite‐level hockey players.

  • Sleep quality partially mediates (33.4%) the beneficial effect of mental detachment on reducing mental fatigue.

  • Recovery strategies targeting both mental detachment and sleep are essential to mitigate mental fatigue in elite performance contexts.

1. Introduction

Throughout the regular season, elite athletes face a demanding schedule packed with training sessions and competitions. In France's premier ice hockey division, the Magnus league, players typically participate in approximately 80 games and around 200 training sessions over a 7‐month season. Athletes competing in the Magnus league, such as all elite performers, devote their lives and intense effort to their sport, striving to excel and secure championship titles. The demanding schedule and continuous pressure to perform faced by athletes can lead to increased fatigue (Whitehead et al. 2019), which requires adequate recovery.

1.1. Mental Fatigue in the Sports Context

In the context of sports, the adapted Demand‐Induced Strain Compensation Model (DISC‐S; Balk et al. 2018) posits that this specific context generates demands, defined as environmental settings that require immediate or sustained efforts (De Jonge et al. 2012). According to the multidimensionality principle of the DISC‐S, demands in sports are categorized into three dimensions: physical (e.g., high‐intensity speed skating), emotional (e.g., an equalizer being scored in the last minute of the game), and cognitive (e.g., choose a shot or pass quickly). To manage the demands effectively, individuals must exert effort, also known as functional load in the Effort‐Recovery model. According to this model, developed by Meijman and Mulder (1998) in the organizational context, work imposes demands—referred to as external load—on individuals. These demands can be both physiological and psychological. To manage the demands effectively, individuals must mobilize resources and exert effort, a process referred to as functional load. Once the demands cease, the level of functional load is expected to return to its baseline, a process known as recovery (Meijman and Mulder 1998). However, when exposure to demands is prolonged or when recovery is insufficient, the accumulation of load may lead to negative consequences such as fatigue or functional impairments (Meijman and Mulder 1998). Just as workers experience external load through their professional activities, athletes are also exposed to high levels of external load, which they must regulate through their functional load to maintain performance and well‐being. This dynamic balance between demands and resources available for athletes (i.e., effort) is a fundamental principle of training. However, there is a limit to the effort the body can sustain. When the body's resources are no longer sufficient to meet the sports demands, negative outcomes, such as fatigue, can arise.

Fatigue is thus defined as “an inability to complete a task that was once achievable within a recent time frame” (Pyne and Martin 2011, 179). Fatigue is recognized as a multifaceted and complex phenomenon with various definitions (Halson 2014). One of the most well‐known and extensively studied aspects of fatigue is its physical dimension known to impair performance. Alongside physical fatigue, mental fatigue, defined as “a psychobiological state caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity” (Hancock and Desmond 2001), can contribute to athletes' condition and their recovery. Nowadays, mental fatigue is increasingly being investigated, but it remains predominantly studied through the cognitive lens. Recent studies in the sports context have highlighted that sports also generate emotional demands (Balk et al. 2020), which can induce mental fatigue (Balk et al. 2018). Some authors argue that emotional and cognitive dimensions should be included in mental fatigue rather than just the cognitive dimension (Van Cutsem et al. 2017). In addition, some studies have shown strong collinearity between the emotional and the cognitive dimensions ranging from 0.54 to 0.73 (e.g., Balk et al. 2018). As a result, these two dimensions have been merged into a single overarching dimension referred to as the mental dimension (Balk et al. 2020; Balk and Englert 2020). In this study, mental fatigue will encompass both the emotional and cognitive dimensions and is defined as a psychological state resulting from sustained mental demands (Weiler et al. 2024).

1.2. Relationships Between Mental Detachment, Sleep Quality, and Mental Fatigue

The Demand‐Induced Strain Compensation‐Recovery (DISC‐R; De Jonge et al. 2012) model is an extension of the DSIC model. In the sports context, the DISC‐R model provides a framework for understanding how athletes manage strain, leverage recovery resources, and maintain performance and well‐being (Balk et al. 2019). Strains can be conceptualized as negative outcomes resulting from an imbalance between high demands and low resources potentially leading to consequences such as fatigue (De Jonge and Dormann 2003). Thus, recovery is a fundamental component of the DISC‐R model and operates across three dimensions: physical, emotional, and cognitive.

In the same vein, the stressor–detachment model (Sonnentag and Fritz 2007) highlights the importance of psychological detachment as a particularly effective recovery mechanism to help individuals function optimally. Psychological detachment can be defined as an individual's sense of being away from the work situation (Etzion et al. 1998). This model has been successfully applied in the sporting environment (Balk et al. 2021), and in this context, detachment refers to being away from all demands and strain generated by training or competition itself and refraining from thinking about sport‐related issues or problems (Balk et al. 2019). This type of detachment encompasses two key dimensions: a cognitive and an emotional dimension (Balk et al. 2021).

Moreover, in the sports context, mental detachment has been assumed to be linked to mental fatigue among athletes (Loch et al. 2020). Indeed, Eccles and Kazmier (2019) have proposed that continuously focusing on their sport can be mentally exhausting for athletes leading to fatigue over time. Thus, mental detachment, which refers to taking a break from thinking about their sport, is highlighted as an effective strategy for promoting mental recovery for athletes. The study by Balk et al. (2019) revealed that greater mental detachment in athletes was associated with higher mental energy. Notably, mental energy was assessed through items reflecting a lack of energy, closely related to mental fatigue (e.g., “I was unable to concentrate well” or “I put off making decisions”). Another study revealed that emotional recovery had a small but significant correlation with emotional energy, whereas cognitive recovery was not significantly correlated with cognitive liveliness (Van Iperen et al. 2020). In this study, emotional energy and cognitive liveliness are two subdimensions of vigor, closely related to, yet fundamentally opposed to, the concept of mental fatigue. However, these studies present certain limitations, as they do not directly examine mental fatigue, and the limited number of investigations on this topic highlights the need for additional empirical evidence to better understand the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue in the sports context.

In addition to mental detachment, another strategy of recovery that can play an important role in recovery and the prevention of mental fatigue is optimizing sleep quality. Subjective sleep quality can be defined as “one's satisfaction of the sleep experience, integrating aspects of sleep initiation, sleep maintenance, sleep quantity, and refreshment upon awakening” (Kline 2013, 1). Sleep is considered as an independent and important recovery mechanism for athletes (Eccles et al. 2021). Sleep can play a crucial role in alleviating the negative effects of an imbalance between demands and resources. Kroshus et al. (2019) highlighted the harmful impact of poor sleep on overall fatigue, a finding further corroborated by Nédélec, Halson et al. (2015), who specifically linked inadequate sleep quality to increased mental fatigue. In a study (Sargent et al. 2014), athletes' sleep was monitored over a 2‐week period using self‐reported diaries and activity watches. Pretraining fatigue was also assessed. Statistical analysis revealed that total sleep time had a significant effect on pretraining fatigue levels (p < 0.02), with shorter sleep durations being associated with higher pretraining fatigue levels. In a further study, sleep and fatigue levels were measured using questionnaires. The results indicated that when athletes reported sleep problems, they also reported symptoms of fatigue including tiredness, low energy, and difficulty concentrating (Dickinson and Hanrahan 2009). In another study, sleep deprivation was inversely associated with mental energy, whereas no significant relationship between sleep quality and mental energy was found (Balk et al. 2019). This counterintuitive result was attributed to a limitation of the study, as the measurements were conducted over a period of only 3 days. Despite the growing interest in the relationship between sleep and mental fatigue in athletes, research study in this area remains limited and the findings are not unanimous. Although some studies highlight the role of sleep duration and deprivation in mitigating fatigue (Sargent et al. 2014; Dickinson and Hanrahan 2009), others fail to establish a significant relationship between subjective sleep quality and mental energy (Balk et al. 2019). These inconsistencies underscore the need for further empirical investigations to clarify the role of sleep as a recovery mechanism and its impact on mental fatigue in athletes.

1.3. Mediating Role of Sleep Quality in the Mental Detachment—Mental Fatigue Relationship

Studies have emphasized the potential beneficial effects of mental detachment and sleep quality in reducing mental fatigue. However, mental detachment and sleep quality may also be interconnected, with mental detachment potentially enhancing sleep quality, which in turn could alleviate mental fatigue, suggesting a mediated relationship between these factors. Indeed, in the sport context, a study has shown that mental detachment was positively and significantly related to sleep quality (Balk et al. 2019). Thus, the evidence remains limited, as only one study has explored the mediating role of sleep in the relationship between mental detachment and mental energy, highlighting the need for further research to confirm and expand these findings.

1.4. Examining the Mental Detachment, Sleep Quality, and Mental Fatigue Relationships on a Daily Basis

To address the daily variation in an athlete's schedule, it is interesting to focus on a within‐person approach, which examines fluctuations from day to day (Sonnentag 2011). Several studies have shown that certain variables can fluctuate from day to day including psychological detachment (Sonnentag 2011) and sleep (Nédélec, Aloulou et al., 2018). In light of these considerations, it is particularly interesting to examine the relationship between an athlete's daily recovery, including psychological detachment and sleep, and their level of mental fatigue.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue on a daily basis among elite ice hockey players. Additionally, we aim to explore the potential mediating role of sleep quality in this relationship.

We hypothesized that mental detachment will negatively predict mental fatigue at the within‐person level (H1), meaning that when athletes experience greater mental detachment than usual, they will report lower levels of mental fatigue than usual. Similarly, we expected that sleep quality will negatively predict mental fatigue at the within‐person level (H2), such that better sleep quality than usual will correspond to lower perceived mental fatigue.

We also hypothesized that mental detachment will positively predict sleep quality at the within‐person level (H3), indicating that greater mental detachment than usual will be associated with better sleep quality. Finally, we hypothesized that sleep quality will partially mediate the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue (H4).

2. Method

2.1. Transparency and Openness Statement

The present study's design and its analysis were not preregistered. The authors agreed to comply with APA Ethics Standard, Sharing Research Data for Verification, allowing other qualified professionals to confirm the analyses and results. Data and code of statistics analyses are publicly available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) and can be accessed at https://osf.io/5ysj7/?view_only=71a3259660f345a8aa0dd4bb597dd63b.

This research followed the same ethics procedure as another study that obtained approval from the French National Ethics Committee for the Research in Physical Activity, Exercise and Sport (CERSTAPS, Notice number: IRB00012476‐2024‐19‐01–290). Informed consent to participate and consent for publication were obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

2.2. Participants

Thirty‐eight male ice hockey players, ranging in age from 16 to 35 years old (M = 20 years old and SD = 3.45) participated in this study. They all played ice hockey at the national competitive level in the same French club. According to the classification of McKay and collaborators, and their level of training and competition, these athletes are at the tier four of the list, which defined them as elite athletes (McKay et al. 2022 ). This study was conducted throughout the preplayoff week, during which the players had six training sessions and one game.

The participants were contacted through the scientific director of the club after the project was presented to the manager. This project is a part of a larger project on health and well‐being of elite athletes. The project was subsequently presented to the players, who were given the choice to participate. If participants agreed to take part in the study, they were required to read and sign a consent form. They had the right to halt the protocol at any time. The protocol of this study was carried out in accordance with APAs ethics standards.

2.3. Measures

The questionnaires were single item questionnaires, intentionally designed to be brief in order to minimize the time burden on players and facilitate repeated assessments (Allen et al. 2022). Their simplicity also aligns with prior sport psychology studies that prioritized feasibility and ecological validity in high‐performance athlete populations (Allen et al. 2022; Isoard‐Gautheur et al. 2022).

Psychological Detachment from sport since the last training (i.e., the day before) was assessed each morning using an item from the Recovery Experience Questionnaire validated in French (REQ; Le Moal et al. 2024). In order to adapt the question to the sports context, “work” was replaced by “training session”. The item used to measure psychological detachment was the following: “What I've done in my free time since the last training session has allowed me to distance myself from my training”. The participants had to indicate to what extent they agreed with the item using a 10‐point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not agreeing at all) to 10 (completely agreeing). This item was selected because it was the closest theoretically to the definition of mental detachment given above.

Subjective sleep quality was assessed each morning upon waking, using a single item from the French‐adapted Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; Blais et al. 1997): “How would you rate the overall quality of your sleep last night?”. Participants rated their sleep satisfaction on a 10‐point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good). Recently, this tool was successfully used to measure the sleep quality in different studies in the sport context (e.g., Costa and Re 2023).

Mental fatigue was assessed each morning upon waking using the French translation of the Single‐Item Fatigue Measure (SIFM; Van Hooff et al. 2007). Participants rated their mental fatigue on a 10‐point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (extremely tired) to 10 (not tired at all), in response to the question, “How mentally tired are you now?” This item showed good association with a multiple‐item measure of fatigue in previous studies (e.g., Van Hooff et al. 2007).

2.4. Procedure: Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA)

EMA enables data collection in the participants' own environment and on a repeated basis (Reifsteck et al. 2021). In this study, EMA was implemented through a mobile application for 1 week, enabling the research team to send reminders and questionnaires to athletes, even when they were out of town, and synchronously for all participants. A fixed time‐based design was implemented during the study. Notifications were scheduled at 5:30 a.m., based on the earliest waking time among participants, to ensure that all athletes had access to the questionnaire upon awakening. At the beginning of the study, a demonstration of the application's features was provided to all players who had the opportunity to test it in the presence of the first author of the manuscript. During the study, participants completed a questionnaire every morning consisting of the previously described single‐item measures (see the measures section). The EMA took place during the same week for all athletes. In the present study, the final sample was 38 athletes who completed a questionnaire per day during 7 days. At the end of the protocol, 244 observations were collected, representing an average of 6.4 observations per participant. Incomplete data were deleted and not used in the statistical analysis.

2.5. Data Analysis

Normality was assessed by examining the Skewness and Kurtosis values of the variables. Pearson's correlation analyses were then conducted at the within‐person level using the R software (R Core Team 2022). Prior to analysis, participants with missing data were excluded and all variables were centered and standardized around each individual's mean for within‐person analyses.

To investigate the mediating effect of sleep quality on the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue, a mediation analysis at the within level was conducted with linear regression models with fixed effect performed with the package lme4 of R (Bates et al. 2015) and mediation analysis performed with the package mediation of R (Tingley et al. 2014).

Following Baron and Kenny's method (Baron and Kenny 1986), we conducted three separate path analyses to assess the mediation effects: the direct path (mental detachment's effect on mental fatigue), the indirect path (sleep quality mediating the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue), and the total path (the combined direct and indirect effects). This approach allowed to estimate the indirect effects through sleep quality while simultaneously controlling for the direct effects of mental detachment on mental fatigue. To ensure the robustness of the mediation effects, bootstrapping with 1000 simulations was employed, providing reliable estimates of the confidence intervals for the indirect effects. The analyses included fixed effects to account for individual variability across participants, ensuring that the mediation effects were not confounded by unobserved heterogeneity.

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Statistics

Normality of the data were screened for all the variables. Skewness and Kurtosis values ranged from −0.66 to 0.57 and from −0.86 to 0.18 (Table 1). As skewness values were between −1 and 1 and kurtosis values were between −2 and 2, the values were considered normal (Carlsberg et al. 2016).

TABLE 1.

Descriptive statistics and correlation analysis at the within level.

Measure Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis 1 2 3
1. Sleep quality 6.43 2.02 −0.66 0.18 —
2. Mental fatigue 3.82 1.83 0.57 −0.08 −0.43*** —
3. Mental detachment 5.93 2.57 −0.26 −0.86 0.35*** −0.36*** —
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Note: Correlation were performed for the within level only. Descriptive statistics (i.e., mean, SD, Skewness, and Kurtosis) were performed with normal data.

*p < 0.05.

**p < 0.01.

***p < 0.001.

Correlation analysis conducted only at the within level were all significant and in the expected direction (Table 1). Indeed, sleep quality was significantly and negatively correlated with mental fatigue (r = −0.43 and p < 0.001) and positively with mental detachment (r = 0.35 and p < 0.001). Mental fatigue was negatively and significantly correlated with mental detachment (r = −0.36 and p < 0.001).

To test our hypotheses, we used a linear fixed effect model, focusing on our three variables of interest at the within level (Table 2). The linear model revealed that mental detachment negatively and significantly predicted mental fatigue (b = −0.24 and p < 0.001). Furthermore, sleep quality negatively and significantly predicted mental fatigue (b = −0.34 and p < 0.001). Finally, the linear fixed effect model revealed that mental detachment positively and significantly predicts the sleep quality (b = 0.36 and p < 0.001). Regarding the mediation analysis, the indirect effect between mental detachment and mental fatigue is significant (p < 0.001). The model revealed that sleep quality mediate 33,4% of the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue.

TABLE 2.

Linear regression models with fixed effect and mediation analysis.

Linear regression b SE p
Mental detachment—>sleep quality 0.36 0.049 0.001
Sleep quality—>mental fatigue −0.34 0.584 0.001
Mental detachment—>mental fatigue −0.245 0.606 0.001
Mediation analysis B CI 95% p
Indirect effect (ACME) −0.123 [−0.19; −0.06] 0.001
Direct effect (ADE) −0.245 [−0.39; −0.10] 0.001
Total effect −0.368 [−0.51; −0.22] 0.001
Proportion mediated 0.334 [0.16; −0.60] 0.001
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Abbreviations: ACME = average causal mediation effect; ADE = average direct effect.

4. Discussion

Ice hockey players face a demanding schedule with numerous training sessions and competitions during which performance is crucial (i.e., championship games, cup games, and playoff games). The significant time dedicated to their sport exposes them to various demands, including cognitive and emotional challenges. Athletes must draw upon their resources to navigate these demands effectively. However, prolonged exposure to such pressure can deplete these resources, potentially resulting in negative consequences such as mental fatigue. Therefore, implementing effective recovery strategies is essential to mitigate the adverse effects of an intense schedule, including mental fatigue. Among these recovery strategies, mental detachment and sleep quality appear to be particularly effective. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between recovery behaviors (i.e., mental detachment and sleep quality) and mental fatigue perceived by athletes.

Firstly, it was hypothesized that the two recovery strategies (i.e., mental detachment (H1) and sleep (H2)) negatively predict mental fatigue. The linear fixed effect model confirms the first two hypothesizes by showing that these recovery strategies significantly and negatively predict mental fatigue at the within person level. In other words, when athletes experience greater mental detachment or better sleep quality than usual, they report feeling less mentally fatigued compared to other days. These results are in line with previous research that support the role of mental detachment and sleep for reducing mental fatigue. Indeed, Eccles and Kazmier (2019) suggested that constantly focusing on sport is mentally taxing, leading to fatigue over time, and that mental detachment can aid in recovery. Similarly, Balk et al. (2019) demonstrated that mental detachment effectively enhanced mental energy, further supporting this conclusion. The findings of the present study regarding the relationship between sleep quality and mental fatigue align with the conclusions of previous reviews. Kroshus et al. (2019) emphasized the connection between poor sleep and general fatigue, whereas Nédélec, Halson et al. (2015) specifically highlighted the link between poor sleep quality and mental fatigue.

The third hypothesis was that mental detachment will be related to sleep quality (H3). The results of the present study confirmed this hypothesis and demonstrated that mental detachment significantly and positively predicted the sleep quality of athletes. This result aligns with previous research demonstrating that mental detachment has a positive and significant relationship with sleep quality (Balk et al. 2019).

Finally, the last hypothesis (H4) focused on exploring the potential mediating role of sleep quality in the relationship between mental detachment and mental fatigue. Results of the present study showed that sleep quality significantly and partially mediated the relation between mental detachment and mental fatigue. Thus, when athletes report higher‐than‐usual mental detachment, they also experience improved sleep quality, which subsequently predicts lower levels of mental fatigue compared to their usual state. This result contrasts with the findings of Balk et al. (2019), which were partially contrary to their hypotheses. In their study, no significant mediation effect of sleep quality was observed between mental detachment and mental energy, whereas a significant mediation effect of sleep deprivation was identified.

This discrepancy between these two studies can be attributed to several methodological differences. Firstly, the participant populations differed significantly. Our study involved professional athletes, whereas Balk et al.'s sample consisted of recreational athletes. This difference in athletic level may influence the nature and intensity of mental detachment as well as its relationship with recovery processes. Secondly, the construct of mental detachment was operationalized differently in the two studies. In our research, mental detachment was directly related to sport‐specific activities (e.g., “What I've done in my free time since the last training session has allowed me to distance myself from my training”), which referred to sport‐related mental detachment. In contrast, Balk et al. used a more general measure of mental detachment, with items such as “I worried about unresolved problems” and “I couldn't switch my mind off” (Balk et al. 2019, 1831). This distinction likely influences the relevance of detachment to the athletes' primary stressors and recovery needs. Finally, the dependent variable differed between the two studies. Although the present study focused on mental fatigue, Balk et al. examined mental energy. This difference in outcome measures may reflect distinct recovery dynamics, further contributing to the contrasting results.

The novelty of the present study lies in the identification of a significant mediation effect specifically linking sport‐related mental detachment, sleep quality, and mental fatigue in professional athletes. These results open new avenues for research, highlighting the need for future studies to confirm and expand upon the mechanisms identified here. Exploring different athletic populations, broader contexts, and alternative methodological approaches will be essential to further validate and refine these initial findings.

5. Limitations

Despite these promising results and the methodological precautions taken in conducting this research, further studies are needed to address certain limitations. Firstly, it should be noted that the results of this study are not necessarily generalizable to other populations, given the specific sample selected for the study. It would be interesting to replicate this protocol with a different sample, such as women, to determine if sex has an effect on this mediation. The present study includes a broad age range (16–35 years). Future research should further examine age‐related variations in sleep, given that sleep architecture and patterns are known to evolve across the lifespan (Ohayon et al. 2004).

One of the main limitations of the present study concerns the relatively small between‐subject sample size (N = 38). Although the use of intensive longitudinal data (244 observations in total) enabled the implementation of within‐person mediation analyses with sufficient power at the observation level, the limited number of participants reduces the generalizability of the findings and increases the risk of Type II errors when estimating between‐subject effects. In this context, we relied on fixed‐effects linear models and bootstrapping procedures to strengthen the robustness of the estimated paths and mediation effects. Moreover, we intentionally employed a parsimonious model with a limited number of variables and parameters to avoid overfitting. Nonetheless, future studies should seek to replicate these findings using larger and more diverse samples in order to confirm the stability of the mediation effects and enhance external validity.

Secondly, the study relied solely on subjective data, which can be influenced by various biases. To obtain an objective view of sleep quality and mental fatigue and gain a better understanding of the athlete's state while limiting variance bias due to a common methodology (Balk et al. 2019), the use of objective measures (e.g., actigraphy) would be beneficial. This can help to prevent the overestimation of the relationship between constructs (Podsakoff et al. 2012). Another limitation lies in the use of single‐item subjective measures, which, although appropriate for EMA and previously validated in similar contexts, do not allow for the assessment of internal consistency reliability. Although these items were chosen for their theoretical relevance and have shown validity in prior research, future studies could benefit from incorporating multiitem scales when feasible to further strengthen measurement reliability.

Thirdly, this study was conducted over a short period of time (i.e., 1 week), during a specific period, the preplayoffs. It would be relevant to extend the duration of the study, for example, over an entire sport season, in order to investigate long‐term effects on mental fatigue and other variables, such as well‐being or even burnout, and to determine if variations can be measured throughout the season, by monitoring athletes at various points throughout the season.

Additionally, we did not assess the potential impact of travel on fatigue levels. Yet, frequent travel may induce a specific form of fatigue as highlighted by Walsh et al. (2021). Future research would benefit from examining how travel influences fatigue and exploring which recovery strategies—particularly those promoting mental detachment—might help mitigate this travel‐related fatigue.

Lastly, another limitation is the potential for recall bias as questions regarding the athlete's detachment were asked the following morning. We chose to ask about detachment the next morning to avoid interfering with athletes' recovery process as a question regarding detachment just before sleep could have negatively impacted sleep quality and levels of fatigue.

6. Practical Implication

The present study suggests that mental detachment is relevant for athlete's recovery. Elite athletes frequently face busy schedules, including meetings, video analysis sessions, and team sheets to consider (Eccles and Kazmier 2019). To unwind, they may engage in hobbies such as reading or cooking (Eccles et al. 2021). Avoiding sport‐related cues, such as training facilities, teammates, staff, or equipment during off‐sport periods, may facilitate psychological detachment (Eccles and Kazmier 2019). However, achieving full psychological detachment is challenging. According to the recovery paradox, “when the need for recovery is high, recovery experiences such as detachment tend to be impaired” (Balk and Englert 2020, 276). Various factors hinder detachment including unfulfilled goals or physical environment (Eccles et al. 2022). To optimize psychological detachment, it is recommended to implement end‐of‐session plans for incomplete goals and to set realistic goals in order to limits unfulfilled goals (Smit 2016). Furthermore, the concept of third‐location decompression, originally developed in military settings (Jones et al. 2013) may be adapted to the sports context. This strategy involves a transition period through a third location (e.g., park, café) between training facilities and home (Eccles et al. 2022). Altogether, these strategies highlight the importance of intentionally structuring transitions and posttraining routines to support psychological detachment and, ultimately, promote athletes' recovery and long‐term well‐being.

7. Conclusion

This study examined the relationships between mental detachment, sleep quality, and mental fatigue in elite ice hockey players, with a specific focus on the mediating role of sleep quality. The findings emphasize the significance of two key recovery mechanisms—mental detachment and sleep quality—in effectively and sustainably managing the emotional and cognitive demands of intensive practice while also reducing mental fatigue. This study also reveals that, in addition to reducing mental fatigue directly, mental detachment also reduces mental fatigue indirectly through sleep quality. Lastly, another important contribution of this study is that mental detachment positively and significantly predicts sleep quality. These findings have practical implications for athletic training and recovery strategies, underscoring the importance of addressing mental fatigue through sufficient sleep and effective mental detachment. Future research should aim to expand these findings across different sports and demographic groups, and incorporate objective measures for a more comprehensive understanding of these relationships.

Ethics Statement

This research followed the same ethics procedure as another study that obtained approval from the French National Ethics Committee for the Research in Physical Activity, Exercise and Sport (CERSTAPS, Notice number: IRB00012476‐2024‐19‐01–290). This study was not preregistered. The authors agree to comply with the APA Ethics Code Standard, Sharing Research Data for Verification, allowing other qualified professionals to confirm the analyses and results should their manuscript be accepted for publication.

Consent

Informed consent to participate and consent for publication were obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the French National Research Agency in the framework of the “Investissements d'avenir” program (ANR‐15‐IDEX‐0002), as part of Université Grenoble Alpes' international research booster program and as part of the Cross Disciplinary Program Sport Perf Health at Grenoble Alpes University. The authors would like to thank the players of the Grenoble ice hockey club “Les Brûleurs de Loups” for their participation in this study.

Descôtes, Nathan , Balk Yannick, Perez Jérôme, Brugniaux Julien, Mendelson Monique, and Isoard‐Gautheur Sandrine. 2025. “The Role of Mental Detachment in the Management of Mental Fatigue in High Level Ice Hockey Players: The Mediating Role of Sleep Quality.” European Journal of Sport Science: e70035. 10.1002/ejsc.70035.

Funding: This work was supported by the French National Research Agency in the framework of the “Investissements d'avenir” program (ANR‐15‐IDEX‐0002), as part of Université Grenoble Alpes' international research booster program and as part of the Cross Disciplinary Program Sport Perf Health at Grenoble Alpes University.

Data Availability Statement

As per APA guidelines, the authors will retain raw data for a minimum of 5 years after publication of the research. Data and code of statistics analyses are publicly available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) and can be accessed at: https://osf.io/5ysj7/.

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Data Availability Statement

As per APA guidelines, the authors will retain raw data for a minimum of 5 years after publication of the research. Data and code of statistics analyses are publicly available at the Open Science Framework (OSF) and can be accessed at: https://osf.io/5ysj7/.

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