Athletes: Sleep Better to Win
If you’re an athlete, you definitely are training regularly to perfect your abilities. Regardless of whether you’re a marathon runner, a golf pro or a pro snowboarder you likely are forgetting about one key area you need to be training in: sleep.
Sleep and Athletic Performance
Now that we’ve warmed up, let’s dive in. As clinical researchers continue to study sleep and athletic performance, there are a growing number of findings that directly correlate sleep with athletic performance. Consider these research findings published in Sports Medicine journal:
When the normal sleep-wake cycle was disturbed, the fine motor skills of tennis players and handball goalkeepers diminished.
Footballers and judo athletes who experienced four fewer hours of sleep showed decreases in power during anaerobic cycling tests.
Weightlifters exhibited worse athletic performance after a second night of restricted sleep than just one night, which suggests a cumulative fatigue effect.
In contrast, sprint times were clocked 5% faster and shooting accuracy improved by 9% for Stanford University men’s basketball players who extended sleep time to at least 10 hours a night over seven weeks.
Sleep and Recovery
According to the London Sports Institute, hormones secreted during sleep help physiologically restore an athlete’s body. Melatonin activates other enzymes that help to reduce inflammation, while other hormones released during deep sleep work to repair muscle, build bone and oxidize fats.
Sleep and Injury
In a 2014 study appearing in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics, one predictor of injury was hours of sleep per night. Adolescent athletes who slept less than eight hours a night on average were 1.7 times more likely to have had an injury compared with those sleeping more.
Long story short, improve your sleep, improve performance, recovery and decrease the likelihood of injury. If you’re wondering where to start, visit our blog to learn more about improving your health and overall sleep lifestyle.