How does sleep affect high performance athletes?
By Shawn Youngstedt, PhD
Anecdotally, many athletes and coaches state that sleep is crucial for athletic performance and recovery from exhaustive and muscle-damaging exercise. However, there is little empirical evidence that even extreme amounts of sleep loss impair performance in elite athletes. Studies in this area have had numerous limitations, including: (1) athletes who are truly intolerant of sleep loss are less likely to volunteer for sleep deprivations experiments; (2) studies have generally not explored skills that involve cognitive function, which could be more sensitive to sleep loss; and (3) studies have involved short-term manipulations of just 1-3 days.
It seems likely that chronically poor or inadequate sleep over a season would impair performance. This might be particularly evident for athletes who train both in the early morning and afternoon, but have a delayed circadian system, which makes it difficulty to obtain adequate sleep amounts for these athletes. Frequent exposure to jet lag over a season is another problem for many athletes. Moreover, sleep apnea is common in some athletes with large body masses and neck sizes. Both sleep loss and intensive training have been associated with a higher incidence of illness and injury, so the combination of these factors could be detrimental to athletes. Ironically, sleep impairment is one of the most reliable indicators that an athlete is training too hard and/or resting/sleeping too little to adapt to intensive training.
References
Blumert PA, Crum AJ, Ernsting M, Volek JS, Hollander DB, Haff EE, Haff GG. The acute effects of twenty-four hours of sleep loss on the performance of national-caliber male collegiate weightlifters. J Strength Cond Res. 2007; 21(4):1146-54.
Learn more about how these medical devices can make a big difference in nighttime comfort for people with breathing issues.Sleep Apnea is a sleep disorder in which breathing is briefly and repeatedly interrupted during sleep. Learn how to cope with this sleep-related breathing disorder.A frequent need to get up and go to the bathroom to urinate at night is called nocturia. It differs...Nearly one-quarter of all workers have shifts that are not during the daytime, and more than two-thirds of these workers...Have you ever wanted to know what happens to your body during menstruation? The latest infographic from the National Sleep...The Electronics and Sleep infographic highlights how technology affects the modern family and how parents can help design a sleep...Orexin receptor antagonists: A new class of sleeping pill Find out more about orexin, and a new type of sleep...How you feel about the sleep you get every night is known as sleep satisfaction. Unlike sleep quantity (which objectively...Feeling rested and rejuvenated after a night’s sleep is everyone’s goal, but how is that feeling measured? Sleep satisfaction ,...If you’ve noticed that your sleep habits have changed, without any major shifts to your lifestyle, you may want to...
Source: Internet