For top athletes, getting enough sleep has long been considered the sort of bland good advice that is obvious but easy to ignore—like eating lots
of vegetables. A pair of recent pilot studies by Charles Samuels, the medical director of the Centre for Sleep and Human Performance in Calgary,
confirms that poor sleep quality is prevalent even in Olympic-level athletes (in this case from the national bobsleigh and skeleton teams). But the
problem is even worse for ordinary people: “It’s average athletes who are the most likely to curtail their sleep to train,” Samuels says. “They’re
getting up at 4 a.m. to run for an hour so they can get to work by 7 a.m.”
That’s not necessarily a winning strategy, especially for people who are already operating on the least amount of sleep that they can handle.
Incurring a steadily mounting sleep debt has well-known effects on mood and cognitive ability, and a few studies are now suggesting that sleep also
has direct links with physical performance. For example, Stanford University sleep researcher Cheri Mah has conducted a series of small studies
testing athletes on the university’s teams. When five varsity swimmers increased their sleep time to ten hours a night from their typical six to nine
hours, they slashed 0.15 seconds from their reaction time off the start and similarly improved their turn time, 15-meter sprint time, and kick rate.
Similarly, increased sleep improved sprint time and free-throw percentage for a group of basketball players.
With only a few participants and no control group, these results are far from definitive, but they represent a first step to quantifying the athletic
benefits of sleep. Samuels, meanwhile, has been working on a project with the Canadian downhill ski team to investigate the link between
inadequate sleep and injuries, as well as studies of how globe-trotting athletes can best adjust to crossing time zones.
It’s still a challenge to apply these results in the real world. “I know it sounds ridiculous to get 10 hours of sleep a night,” Mah admits. “That’s an
extreme.” For the typical person, she says, consistently increasing the amount of nightly sleep by even a small amount can produce positive effects.
Most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, while teens and young adults need nine or more, though there’s quite a bit of individual
variation. One of the most interesting implications of her studies with varsity athletes is that even just a few weeks of concerted sleep catch-up has
a measurable effect on performance—something to keep in mind before the next big game or race.
It’s also worth noting that, just as sleep helps exercise, the converse is also true. A 2010 study from the Federal University of São Paulo found
that moderate aerobic exercise (but not strength training or heavy aerobic exercise) increased reported sleep time by 26 percent in a group of
chronic insomniacs. One caveat, notes Samuels, is that exercise in the three hours before bedtime can actually hinder sleep in adults in their 30s
and older—if they already struggle with sleep. “If you’re a good sleeper,” he adds, “nothing matters.”
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