If you want to be a good athlete, it goes beyond just having athletic gifts on the playing field.  What are you doing to put yourself in a great position to do well in your sport?

Last week, I touched on nutrition, specifically 5 super foods to make you a great athlete.  In week’s past, I have talked about speed drills, working out, the mental aspect.  This week, I’m going to discuss another key component to being a great athlete…

SLEEP!

Surprisingly, this seems to be a tough one for my athletes to grasp.  I don’t know how many times I have heard this summer, “Oh I’m so tired.”  Yawning in my face.  I ask what you have been doing and they seem to be staying up just for the sake of staying up.  Then not getting the proper amount of sleep.

Through the years research has shown that the negative effects of sleep loss can lead to any of the following:

  • Slower reaction time and motor function
  • Increased risk of injury
  • Increased risk of illness and disease
  • Decreased weight training ability in sub-max and max lifts
  • And more

The Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory decided to do a study to see how sleep could affect athletic performance.  The Stanford basketball team was chosen to participate.

They studied them for 2-4 weeks with their normal sleep schedules.  Then they studied them for 5-7 weeks trying to get the athletes to sleep 8-10 hours nightly.  They kept very meticulous data for each period.

The results showed that the latter period where the athletes slept more, you saw significant improvements in all the performance measurements such as shooting accuracy, reaction time, sprint times, mood, and fatigue.

Here were some tips that they provided to get the proper amount and quality of sleep:

  • Obtain 8-10 hours of sleep a night and not just before a competition.
  • Be consistent with your sleep schedule.  Your bodies like regularity so provide that with your sleep patterns.
  • Make sure your room is very dark.
  • Go the bathroom before bed and avoid caffeine after 3pm.
  • Implement 10 – 30 minute power naps to boost alertness and performance if you need them.  Avoid them if you have trouble sleeping at night.

This final tip wasn’t part of the study, but it is something I remembered from a track coach awhile back.  Make sure that you fall asleep and wake up on different days.  Meaning, if you get 8 hours of sleep, it affects your body differently if you went to bed at 10pm and got up at 6am the next day, rather than 1am and get up at 9am.  You are just not the same.

You have to look at sleep, nutrition, speed training, strength training, recovery, etc. as small pieces to a greater whole.  Individually, one isn’t more important than the other.  You won’t notice a huge negative effect if just one is missing.  But collectively with all those components, you can make a great athlete and that is what you should be striving for.