Abstract
University athletes are unique because they not only have to cope with the normal psycho-physiological stress of training and playing sport, but they also need to accommodate the stress associated with their academic studies along with considerable stress from their social environment. The ability to manage and adapt to stress ultimately helps improve athletic performance, but when stress becomes too much for the athlete, it can result in maladaptation's including sleep disruption which is associated with performance loss, negative mood changes, and even injury or illness. This research aimed to determine if sleep quantity and quality were associated with maladaptation in university athletes. We examined subjective measures of sleep duration and sleep quality along with measures of mood state, energy levels, academic stress, training quality and quantity, and frequency of illness and injury in 82 young (18–23 years) elite athletes over a 1 year period in 2020. Results indicate sleep duration and quality decreased in the first few weeks of the academic year which coincided with increased training, academic and social stress. Regression analysis indicated increased levels of perceived mood (1.3, 1.1–1.5, Odds Ratio and 95% confidence limits), sleep quality (2.9, 2.5–3.3), energy levels (1.2, 1.0–1.4), training quality (1.3, 1.1–1.5), and improved academic stress (1.1, 1.0–1.3) were associated with ≥8 h sleep. Athletes that slept ≥8 h or had higher sleep quality levels were less likely to suffer injury/illness (0.8, 0.7–0.9, and 0.6, 0.5–0.7 for sleep duration and quality, respectively). In conclusion, university athletes who maintain good sleep habits (sleep duration ≥8 h/night and high sleep quality scores) are less likely to suffer problems associated with elevated stress levels. Educating athletes, coaches, and trainers of the signs and symptoms of excessive stress (including sleep deprivation) may help reduce maladaptation and improve athlete's outcomes.
Highlights
Training is designed to produce stress beyond the body’s ability to cope, which sets in motion subsequent adaptation, resulting over time, in super-compensation, and a training effect if recovery is adequate
When separated into days of the week (Figure 1), we found that females and males tended to show similar sleep duration and quality patterns throughout the week except Monday and Saturday when females showed small increases in sleep duration compared to males (ES = 0.14 and 0.17, p = 0.01 and 0.01, respectively)
Completing an ordinal logistical regression between sleep duration and sleep quality with injury/illness reporting, we found that when athletes slept ≥8 h per night they were less likely to suffer injury/illness (OR = 0.8, 95% CI = 0.7–0.9, model = −2.6282 – 0.2154 ∗ sleep duration, likelihood ratio χ2 = 4.0096 with one degree of freedom, p = 0.04)
Summary
Training is designed to produce stress beyond the body’s ability to cope, which sets in motion subsequent adaptation, resulting over time, in super-compensation, and a training effect if recovery is adequate. The key to efficient and effective exercise training is managing the training load with recovery. If training recovery is insufficient, stress can build up resulting in maladaptation. Too much recovery can result in insufficient stress, little adaptation, and little performance gain. The amount of recovery required to allow optimal restitution of bodily functions varies depending on the athletes physiological and psychological profiles (Bishop et al, 2008), the preceding training stimulus along with the athletes accumulated training stimuli. Recovery from athletic training can be influenced by sleep (Bird, 2013)
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