What do we know about sports and sleep? Everyone “knows” athletes tend to do better after a good night’s sleep But what’s the data?
Dr. Vernon Rowe discussed this topic during an interview by Steve Fisch for his Good Sports TV show. He talked about the importance of sleep for athletic performance, and touched on concussion.
Though we are learning about the performance problems created by concussion in sports, we know virtually nothing about the sleep disorders those concussions can cause.
Moughin, in 1991, showed that sleep loss hurt a cyclist’s performance, and it did it by making the cyclist work harder, and get less for the energy expended, by causing more anaerobic metabolism, and increasing lactate production.
Mah et al in 2011 studied the Stanford men’s basketball team, and found that with sleep extension, the time to sprint 282 feet decreased by a full second. Also, free throws and three-pointers increased over 10%, and self-rated performance in practices and games increased by over 10% and 20%, respectively. And these numbers were highly statistically significant.
In 25 years of Monday night football win/loss data clearly favor the West coast teams. (article in Current Biology). This can be explained to some extent by sleep and the clock we all have in our bodies. When the game is played in the West, the percentage of wins is about equal between East and West. But when the game is played in the East, the West coast clearly dominates. This is because reaction time, strength, duration of high intensity exercise, lower pain perception, less joint stiffness and inflammation, and lower perceived effort, all clearly favor the West coast teams. Because they’re all better in the early evening. And when West coast teams play Monday night, they always play, during what for them, is the early evening.
And when the Royals had to play in San Francisco, they realized that a good night’s sleep was more important than an extra practice, and they behaved accordingly. What would have happened if that last game of the World’s Series had been played in the afternoon instead of the evening? That may be the same kind of question as Gordon at third base. We’ll never know!