Exercise expectation changes psychophysiological responses to sprint exercise regardless of changes in pacing and performance

Deception of exercise-related may influence pacing, performance and psychophysiological responses to continuous exercise, but little is known about such effects on sprint exercises. Most sports modalities are intermittent in nature, so the present study verified if sprint exercise expectation deceived by false information influenced pacing strategy, performance and psychophysiological responses to sprint exercise bouts. We hypothesised that pacing and performance would be based on affective valence in this deception study. Eleven road cyclists performed two sprint interval training (SIT) sessions in counterbalanced order. In one session, we deceived participants by informing them they would perform a more physiologically challenging exercise bout (MDDE) when compared with the control session (CON). Psychophysiological variables such as oxygen uptake, lactate, heart rate (HR), feeling scale, felt arousal scale and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were sampled during or after each sprint in SIT protocols. We observed no effect on pacing and performance assessed as power output, regardless of the worsened affective valence in the MDEE session. Furthermore, null effects were detected in most psychophysiological variables, with the exception of HR and affective valence. Performance in both SIT conditions was strongly correlated with affective valence and RPE. These results challenged the role of affective valence on pacing regulation and performance in sprint exercises.