There is no doubt that sleep is important to sports performance. It plays a significant role in physiological systems, cognitive judgment, and even memory and learning. The ideal sleep time for adults should be about 8 hours. However, many athletes will have various sleep problems due to excitement or tension after daily training or before important competitions, such as insomnia, delayed sleep onset, and waking up midway, which may affect their performance. play.
In this blog, Galileo sports - a global supplier of golf net and golf hitting cages - will play detective and uncover the mystery behind sleeping.We know a lot of you are eager to know the impact of sleep deprivation on sports. Don’t worry, we’ve done our homework and are ready to spill the beans.
Update:
The physical and psychological stress of high-intensity exercise results from high training loads, multiple travels, variability in training and competition schedules, and the psychosocial stress of pressure to perform well, as well as the impact of social media (excessive nighttime screen time). The influence of other factors such as length of time has caused athletes’ sleep quality to be very unstable. Therefore, elite athletes generally lack high-quality sleep (<7 hours). Various studies have shown that athletes themselves report that they have trouble sleeping and are tired during the day but have difficulty falling asleep at night. Therefore, some studies show that about 50%-78% of elite athletes are troubled by sleep disorders, and about 25% of them suffer from severe sleep disorders. < p="">
Sleep can be defined as the process by which an individual becomes inactive in response to external environmental stimuli and is necessary for the body to regain energy. From a scientific perspective, sleep can be roughly divided into two stages:
Rapid Eye Movement (REM, Rapid Eye Movement): During this period, the eyes move rapidly, and most of our dreams occur in this stage.
Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM, Non-Rapid Eye Movement): NREM can be further subdivided into four sub-stages, namely S1, S2, S3 and S4, which also reflects the "depth" of sleep. Among them, S3 and S4 are also called slow wave sleep (SWS, or deep sleep), which are particularly important for athletes' physical recovery.
When we first fall asleep, we usually enter NREM first, and then switch to REM. The above two stages add up to one cycle, which takes about 90 to 120 minutes, so the average person can repeat four to five cycles every night.
Sleep is the best recovery strategy
Many athletes agree that sleep is the least replaceable of all recovery strategies.
During sleep, recovery is promoted primarily through hormonal activity. The most important hormone, melatonin is produced from the neurotransmitter serotonin, stimulated by dark environments and subsequently released from the pineal gland at night to promote sleep. Melatonin has a range of antioxidant properties, which makes a suitable sleep environment critical given its sensitivity to light and its impact on recovery and health.
In addition to acting as an antioxidant, melatonin activates other pro-inflammatory enzymes to neutralize oxidative free radicals, which damage cells and promote tissue inflammation. Immune function is also regulated by melatonin through the nervous and endocrine systems. The cycle of light and dark is an important factor affecting the regulation of circadian rhythm and the level of melatonin secretion.
Sleep promotes the recovery of the immune and endocrine systems, the recovery of the nervous system and the metabolic expenditure of the previous training day, and stimulates memory and learning potential on subsequent training days. During deep sleep (stages 3 and 4), the release of growth hormone and androgens is key to muscle repair, muscle growth, bone growth, and promotion of fat oxidation.
Lack of sleep cannot be compensated by taking nutritional supplements, drinking energy drinks, or doing any physical therapy. Of course, it is not just athletes, but ordinary people should not neglect sleep and miss the anti-inflammatory factors released by the body in the early morning. Physical fatigue and pain.
You probably know that having enough muscle mass can help you burn more fat. In addition to helping you burn more calories during training, this is because increasing muscle mass will increase your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Even if you don't do anything, your muscle mass can still help you burn fat.
Staying up late will cause you to lose muscle mass, reduce protein synthesis, and significantly increase cortisol. Increased cortisol will increase fat mass. In addition, the loss of muscle mass also reduces metabolism and calorie consumption.
Impact of sleep deprivation on athletic performance and injury risk
Too little sleep affects an athlete's performance and recovery, potentially affecting their athletic ability, cognitive abilities such as submaximal strength or anaerobic capacity. Additionally, many studies have linked sleep duration to the risk of injury due to its effects on immune function and the nervous system. For example, a study by Milewski et al. analyzing 112 adolescent athletes showed that those who slept an average of less than 8 hours per night had a risk of injury that was 1.7 times greater than that of those who slept more than 8 hours. times. Another study on the relationship between sleep and injury risk analyzed 340 elite teenage athletes and found that those who slept more than eight hours a day were about 60 percent less likely to be injured. Additionally, another recently published study analyzing NCAA basketball players showed that athletes who don't sleep well are more likely to be injured. According to the study, for every extra hour of sleep, the risk of injury the next day was reduced by 43%.
Even a short period of poor sleep quality can be enough to impact athletic performance. For example, as early as 1994, there was literature showing that sleeping only 3 hours for three consecutive nights significantly decreased weightlifting performance (Bench Press, Leg Press and Deadlift).
Later, Australian scholar Dr. Melissa Skein published another study in 2011, which found that the sprint performance of 10 ball strength athletes dropped significantly after 30 hours of sleep deprivation. Researchers say this may be related to a decrease in muscle glycogen and an increase in emotional stress.
An article published in 2009 by British scholar Dr. Samuel Oliver and his team compared the performance of 11 runners in a 30-minute endurance run during normal sleep and after 24 hours of sleeplessness [Note 3]. The results also show that staying awake for 24 hours will reduce the running distance and make exercise more strenuous.
To sum up, according to a recent review published by experts in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the optimal sleep time for teenagers is 8 to 10 hours, and for healthy adults is 7 to 9 hours. However, experts suggest that athletes need more Allow more time to recover from the physical and psychological demands of physical exercise. Therefore, in order to have a good night's sleep, one can follow different sleep hygiene habits, such as avoiding stimulants like caffeine, alcohol and greasy food before bed, making sure to get more sun during the day, and developing relaxation habits before bed (such as breathing cycle or meditate), reduce screen time before bed, or rest in a well-ventilated, dark, quiet environment. In addition, many studies have also shown that adequate sleep can improve cognitive judgment, pain perception, immune system, nutritional metabolism and endocrine function, etc., which is beneficial to athletes' overall health and daily training.
In summary, sleep plays a critical role in athlete health and performance, and responsible physicians and coaches should be aware of the potential effects associated with high-level athletic practice and work to predict and eliminate them.
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