Sleep/wake behaviour of competitive adolescent athletes in New Zealand: insight into the impact of early morning training

Sink or Swim? Sleep Patterns in Highly Trained Adolescent Swimmers during the In-Season Phase of Training

“…As reported by Steenekamp et al, 13 sleep duration was significantly reduced on nights preceding early morning training (6:44 hour:min) compared with nights with no early morning training session (8:45 hour:min) in 32 adolescent swimming and rowing athletes. 13 A further study by Gudmundsdottir 12 reported sleep duration was significantly shorter on nights preceding early morning training (5:21 hour:min) compared with later morning training (6:37 hour:min) and no morning training (6:53 hour:min) in 108 Icelandic adolescent swimmers. 12 The results of the current study are consistent with previous findings, 12,13 Table 4 Linear mixed model (LMM) fixed and random effect parameters for the model examining the mean difference in objective sleep indices between nights, with p-values, standardized mean differences (SMD), and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).…”

“…13 A further study by Gudmundsdottir 12 reported sleep duration was significantly shorter on nights preceding early morning training (5:21 hour:min) compared with later morning training (6:37 hour:min) and no morning training (6:53 hour:min) in 108 Icelandic adolescent swimmers. 12 The results of the current study are consistent with previous findings, 12,13 Table 4 Linear mixed model (LMM) fixed and random effect parameters for the model examining the mean difference in objective sleep indices between nights, with p-values, standardized mean differences (SMD), and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Adolescent athletes in the current study had significantly less WASO on EARLY training days (25.3 minute) compared with REST (61.9 minute), which is a similar finding to the Gudmundsdottir 12 study, where WASO was higher when there was no morning training on the next day.…”

“…These sports typically involve large training volumes, such as swimming. Two previous studies by Steenekamp et al, 13 and Gudmundsdottir 12 measured the sleep duration of adolescent swimmers using actigraphy, and found that total sleep duration prior to early morning training (6:44 and 5:21 hour:min, respectively) was well below the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep for adolescents. 12 13 Furthermore, Steenekamp et al, 13 suggested that athletes did not compensate for early morning training sessions by going to bed earlier the night before, and rather, their bedtime remained constant regardless of training times the following day.…”

“…9,10 Adolescent athletes experience high levels of sleep disturbance due to increased academic and training demands, often requiring early wake-up times and late-night training sessions to fit in with school schedules. [11][12][13] Further exacerbating this issue, adolescents experience a delayed circadian rhythm due to many varying factors including biological, psychological, and sociocultural influences. 14 Sleep onset and offset is usually much later in adolescents, primarily due to a change in the biological timing mechanism that causes a delay in sleep onset.…”

The Impact of Covid-19 on Healthy Habits and Psychological Well-Being of Chilean Female Handball Players

“…To explain this finding, we can only speculate with the idea that the absence of factors that strongly affect athletes' sleep quality, such as competition stress/anxiety, muscle soreness or travel (Halson y Juliff, 2017), had a positive impact on the present group of handball players. Furthermore, the lack of early morning training commitments may have contributed to extend their sleep as much as posible (Steenekamp, Zaslona, Gander, Rowlands y Signal, 2020). In this line our sample, made up mostly of undergraduate or graduate students who had no children, could have benefitted from sleep and work schedules more closely aligned to their endogenous day-and night rhythm due to the non-existence of strict onset hours for college and/or training (Altena et al, 2020).…”