Optimising Sleep For Athletes

Sleep has been suggested to be the best recovery tool available to increase adaptations from training and improve performance in competition.¹ Healthy adults are recommended to get between 7-9 hours of sleep per night. In contrast, aspiring athletes seem to benefit from up to 9-10 hours of sleep to reach their full potential.¹ Despite the well-known importance of sleep for health and training, research into recovery has largely focused on post-exercise recovery methods such as compression garments and nutritional interventions, and sleep has been somewhat neglected.²

The athletic population consist of various sports where the stressors such as training volume, intensity, competitions, and psychological pressure can alter the requirements for sleep. There seem to be a scarcity in normative sleep data in athletes; Leeder et al.² compared the sleep of 47 GB Olympic athlete’s from several sports to 20 non-athletic controls. Whilst the elite-athletes spent more time in bed, they had a longer sleep latency and spend more time awake during the night leading to a shorter time spent asleep, as well as a lower quality of the sleep.

Partial sleep loss has been associated with a multitude of negative effects for health and performance. There seem to be some ambiguity about what aspects of sports performance are affected by the loss of sleep. This may be due to the heterogeneity in study designs and the magnitude of deprivation the study participants have been subjected to. Nevertheless, the greatest loss seem to be in cognitive tasks, which includes decision making and reaction time.^2,3 Metabolic processes are also altered; insufficient sleep reduces protein resynthesis and stimulates catabolic processes, impairs appetite regulation, and suppresses immune function.^1,4

Sleep extension has been investigated in NCAA basketball players with positive results for performance and mood. Mah et al.⁵ recruited 11 members of Stanford University’s men’s basketball team and initially tracked their sleep for 2-4 weeks. Thereafter, the subjects were instructed to obtain as much extra sleep as possible, with a minimum of being in bed for at least 10 hours per night for 5-7 weeks. There was some interpersonal variability in the length of these periods to fit the students’ academic schedules. As a result of the intervention, the subjects increased their total sleep time from 6.6 hours to 8.4 hours paralleled with a substantial reduction in daytime sleepiness and fatigue.

All athletic performance measures also improved, including a 9% improvement in free throw accuracy, 9.2% improvement in 3-point field goals, and 4.3% time reduction in a 282 feet sprint test. Furthermore, self-rated mental and physical well-being after practices and games were significantly increased following sleep extension. These results indicate that sleep deprived athletes are not performing at their full capacity. It is important to note that this study did not have a control group and only included a small sample. Yet, the authors argue that optimal sleep is paramount for athletes to be better able to reach their full potential.

Healthy sleep can be trained by adhering to certain sleep hygiene strategies.³ Below is a list from UCSD Center for Pulmonary and Sleep Medicine outlining the top ten recommendations for good sleep.³ Even though it may be difficult to implement them all, it is desirable to implement as many as possible. For athletes that experience difficulties obtaining sufficient nocturnal sleep, brief daytime naps could provide a means to reduce the effects of sleep loss.⁴

1. Don’t go to bed until you are sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy, get out of bed and do something else until you become sleepy.
2. Regular bedtime routines/rituals help you relax and prepare your body for bed (reading, warm bath, etc.).
3. Try to get up at the same time every morning (including weekends and holidays).
4. Try to get a full night’s sleep every night, and avoid naps during day if possible (if you must nap, limit to 1 h and avoid nap after 3 p.m.).
5. Use the bed for sleep and intimacy only; not for any other activities such as TV, computer or phone use, etc.
6. Avoid caffeine if possible (if must use caffeine, avoid after lunch).
7. Avoid alcohol if possible (if must use alcohol, avoid right before bed).
8. Do not smoke cigarettes or use nicotine, ever.
9. Consider avoiding high-intensity exercise right before bed (extremely intense exercise may raise cortisol, which impairs sleep).
10. Make sure bedroom is quiet, as dark as possible, and a little on the cool side rather than warm (similar to a cave).

For many athlete’s it is likely that extending sleep could serve as a simple (and free) means of improved recovery to increase fitness and subsequent performance. Whether the goal is health, learning, or sporting performance, obtaining sufficient sleep of good quality should be regarded as an integral component and its importance cannot be overstated.

References

1. Bonnar D, Bartel K, Kakoschke N, Lang C. Sleep Interventions Designed to Improve Athletic Performance and Recovery: A Systematic Review of Current Approaches. Sports Med. 2018;48(3):683-703. doi:10.1007/s40279-017-0832-x
2. Leeder J, Glaister M, Pizzoferro K, Dawson J, Pedlar C. Sleep duration and quality in elite athletes measured using wristwatch actigraphy. J Sports Sci. 2012;30(6):541-545. doi:10.1080/02640414.2012.660188
3. Vitale KC, Owens R, Hopkins SR, Malhotra A. Sleep Hygiene for Optimizing Recovery in Athletes: Review and Recommendations. Int J Sports Med. 2019;40(8):535-543. doi:10.1055/a-0905-3103
4. Halson SL. Sleep in elite athletes and nutritional interventions to enhance sleep. Sports Med. 2014;44 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S13-S23. doi:10.1007/s40279-014-0147-0
5. Mah CD, Mah KE, Kezirian EJ, Dement WC. The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep. 2011;34(7):943-950. Published 2011 Jul 1. doi:10.5665/SLEEP.1132

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