There are many reasons we don’t get enough sleep. One reason is that we may have repetitive thoughts that rob us of a good night’s slumber. These annoying thinking patterns are common with anxiety disorders and when we undergo stressful life transitions.
Another reason we miss out on rest is that we may not get enough daytime activity to feel fatigued in the evenings, resulting in restlessness. Exercise is considered a highly favorable treatment for restlessness that impedes how you sleep.
Exercise is emerging as an important habit for quality sleep. When we embrace an active lifestyle and start to workout regularly, it helps us fall asleep faster even among those who’ve been diagnosed with insomnia.
What about those who are already active? Research suggests that longer bedtimes can offer benefits. Motor coordination may be enhanced from extending our rest, and this can give athletes a competitive advantage. In fact, even if you do not feel sleepy during the daytime, more sleep could offer benefits that help you complete demanding physical challenges.
To find out how more rest affects coordination and performance, researchers asked sets of athletes to add extra time to their dedicated bedtime schedule. The positive outcomes suggest that those who have performance goals would be wise to prioritize their time between the sheets.
One study asked a subset of collegiate basketball players to commit extra time in bed. After several weeks, athletic outcomes were compared across all basketball players. The group that slept more were asked to aim for 10 hours of time in bed. The result?
Another research study asked collegiate tennis players to extend their sleep time for a single week. The goal was 9 hours in bed. The actual sleep improvement was an increase from 7.1 at baseline to 8.8 hours.
Finally, researchers have asked professional rugby players to extend their sleep time. Like college athletes, these individuals face elevated levels of physical stress and are under pressure to perform. The test of more sleep time lasted 6 weeks and then the quality of play was assessed.
In addition to sports-specific skills, inadequate sleep reduces other general capacities. For example, sleep loss reduces an athlete’s threshold for overtraining. This means that when sleep is not optimal, recovery time is increased after a challenging workout. Sleep deprivation also reduces physical performance in terms of maximal strength. And finally, reviews on this topic “find that the sports requiring speed, tactical strategy, and technical skills are most sensitive to sleep.”
A lot of athletes already use caffeine on a daily basis, and it can help us feel more alert.
Researchers wanted to test whether caffeine could help athletes recover their coordination deficits that occur due to inadequate sleep. To do this, researchers restricted sleep time to just 5 hours in collegiate tennis players. As you may expect, this caused their serving accuracy to drop significantly.
Players were given 80 mg caffeine, because this is an amount common to a RedBull energy drink or achievable through a 12-ounce cup of coffee. But giving the players 80 mg caffeine or placebo was unable to rescue the serving issues caused by inadequate sleep. As a result, the researchers “conclude that adequate sleep is essential for best performance … and that caffeine is no substitute for lost sleep.“
Much like every other aspect of athleticism, bedtime habits are amenable to change. Going to bed is a keystone habit that helps us to achieve virtually any other habit we desire. Finding your baseline amount of sleep time can give you a good starting point to extend upon. With the Treo whole-person platform, some members track habits related to their bedtime including total hours in bed or time resting. Interested in learning more about how Treo can work for you and your team? Email us at info@treowellness.com.
As Treo’s Global Wellness Researcher, Karlie uses recent research findings to support healthier daily habits. Karlie earned her doctorate in Neuroscience and Behavior and bachelors in Health and Exercise Science.
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