Research only scratches the surface on how sleep influences athlete health. Studies investigating sleep in athletes often suffer from inadequate experimental control, a lack of females and questions concerning the validity of the chosen sleep assessment tools. Athletic performance is reduced by a night or more without sleep, but the influence on performance of partial sleep restriction over 1-3 nights, a more real-world scenario, remains unclear. bjsports-2020-102025Įlite athletes are particularly susceptible to sleep inadequacies, characterised by habitual short sleep (<7 hours/night) and poor sleep quality (eg, sleep fragmentation).
If giving yourself enough time to sleep with a regular routine does not help you feel rested, you should seek some professional advice from a sleep physician- this could be a sign of an underlying condition.British journal of sports medicine, 2020, pp. Sleep quality may not be in your control all the time.
“I think it has changed a lot of the perception about sleep, where they all kind of looked at sleep, as, you know, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. He also said many athletes are so focused on training as hard as they possibly can that they forget to make sleep a priority. This year, he is one of the first staff members on an Olympic team that solely specialises in sleep.ĭurmer said the pressure of competition and jetlag can often throw off an athlete’s sleep schedule during the Olympic Games. Jeffrey Durmer is devoted to helping various athletes by optimising their performance through sleep programmes. With athletes devoting their life to training and preparing for large competitions such as the Olympics, how do they manage to get a good night’s sleep? Sleep Consultant and Neuroscientist, Dr.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics is well underway, after a year-long delay due to the Coronavirus pandemic.