Sleep hygiene is key to improving sports performance. Adequate rest accelerates recovery and also optimises energy and concentration during training. Discover how sleep can make a difference to your results.
What Sleep Hygiene Is and Why It Matters
Sleep hygiene measures are habits essential for improving sleep quality. They help us fall asleep and stay asleep.
Understanding the structure of sleep helps explain what happens in our body while we sleep. We do more than close our eyes and disconnect from our surroundings. The brain and most bodily systems keep working to repair damaged tissues and cells or replenish energy stores.
Sleep has several stages that occur in cycles. They begin at stage 1, continue to REM sleep and then start again, throughout the night. A simpler division is into non-REM sleep, covering stages 1, 2, 3 and 4, and REM sleep. Each night includes 4-6 cycles, with a new one starting every 80-100 minutes.
Non-REM sleep accounts for around 75% of sleep. It begins as a person starts falling asleep and continues until the first three stages, explained in more detail below, are completed:
Stages of Sleep
- Stage 1 can be described as an intermediate stage between being awake and falling asleep. It can be considered light sleep.
- Stage 2 begins on entering deeper sleep. The person disconnects from their surroundings and body temperature drops slightly.
- During stages 3 and 4, a person enters deeper, more restorative sleep. Blood pressure falls and breathing slows. The body’s muscles relax and blood supply to them increases. The body releases hormones such as GH, which repairs tissues and promotes their growth, and anabolic hormones, which synthesise proteins and metabolise free fatty acids to provide energy and prevent amino acid catabolism. This restores energy levels.
REM sleep accounts for 25% of sleep cycles. This stage begins approximately 70-90 minutes after falling asleep and increases as the cycles progress, to around 90-110 minutes. In other words, REM sleep becomes longer as the night goes on.
REM sleep is characterised by the following: the eyes move from side to side, the body relaxes and remains motionless, body temperature is not fully regulated, and the brain and body are energised, supporting daytime performance.
Causes and Factors Affecting Poor Sleep Hygiene in Athletes
Several factors can affect athletes’ sleep, including work-related stress and pre-competition stress, mental health problems, illness (such as sleep apnoea), electronic device use before bed, intense training late in the day, travel before competition that disrupts daily habits and causes imbalances (such as jet lag), and stimulant use, among others.
Symptoms of Insufficient Restorative Sleep
Sleep has been shown to affect all aspects of sports performance, from training to actual performance and recovery. It also affects the risk of injury and recovery from it. Sleep health is also closely related to mental health. Poor-quality sleep affects areas relevant to sport, including strength, endurance, attention, coordination, speed and respiratory function.
Some studies found that better and more regular sleep was associated with reduced fatigue, injuries and illness in athletes. This agrees with other researchers’ findings linking reduced sleep quality to increased illness among professional Australian football players. They also showed a relationship between ineffective sleep and levels of testosterone and cortisol in saliva among professional rugby athletes. These hormones significantly affect athletes’ abilities and were found to be reduced.
How to Improve Sleep Quality and Quantity
In an interview, Dr Madrid offers tips to follow before bed to maintain good sleep hygiene:
- Switch to dimmer lighting.
- Stop using electronic devices 1h before bed and use an orange filter during the wind-down period.
- Avoid activities that irritate you or make you irritable.
- Create bedtime rituals: they are fundamental and they work. These small actions tell the brain it is time to sleep, such as brushing your teeth or following a night-time skincare routine.
He also suggests activities during the day that help support better sleep:
- Start the day by moving.
- Get natural light.
- Include another dose of social contact.
- Look after your diet, eating most of your food at midday.
- Switch off and meditate at the end of the day.
For Dr Madrid, staying active during the day and reserving the night for sleep is crucial for maintaining circadian rhythms.
In addition, the Neurology Department at Sanitas La Moraleja Hospital recommends avoiding stimulants, eating a light dinner, keeping regular sleep schedules, avoiding long naps (no more than 20-30 minutes), and creating a suitable environment that promotes and maintains sleep.
What Physiological and Restorative Effects Does Good Sleep Hygiene Have?
As mentioned, during sleep cycles the body undergoes different physiological changes affecting the entire organism. Heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure change during the night, and hormones are released to help repair tissues and control the body’s energy use. This shows how poor sleep quality can contribute to heart problems or weight issues related to hormonal changes.
How Much Does Sleep Hygiene Affect an Athlete?
As discussed, lack of sleep affects athletes physically and psychologically. Studies show that restorative sleep reduces athletes’ risk of injury and illness, as well as recovery times after hard training.
Similarly, it affects strength and speed, reducing the maximum strength and speed an athlete has been able to achieve.
How Much Should an Athlete Sleep?
Saying everyone should sleep 8h is now outdated. Studies suggest a range of 7 to 9 hours, depending on the individual and the day.
It depends on genetics, activity during the day and individual needs. Duration alone does not determine whether sleep is restorative: its depth also plays an important role.
Good or restorative sleep can be defined as enough for you to have a good next day and perform without stimulants. People in Spain sleep an average of 7.2h.
Muscle glycogen levels have been found to decrease after poor sleep, as do testosterone levels. Conversely, cortisol levels fall when athletes extend their rest.
Does the Impact Differ by Sport?
As mentioned, lack of sleep affects athletes physically and psychologically. It can therefore be said that it does not have a greater impact on one particular sport. Every sport requires concentration, motivation and replenished energy levels.
Each discipline requires a more specific quality, but lack of sleep affects decision-making or following a coach’s precise instructions in a team sport, for example, just as it affects a runner’s maximum training speed or a weightlifter’s maximum strength.
