Sleep-Wake Cycle of Elite Athletes Prior to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games

Abstract

Objective: To analyze chronotype, duration and quality of sleep among elite athletes, to compare differences in sleep variables between sex, and to compare differences between athletes of individual and team sports.
 Method: The sample included 70 Brazilian elite athletes of both sex (male=37; female=33) with a mean age 23.0 ± 4.0 years old. To measure sleep-wake cycle, athletes wore an actigraph on the wrist for 10 days. Moreover, athletes answered the chronotype questionnaire of Horne and Östberg.
 Results: The most athletes are intermediate-type (n=55, 78.6%), with a mean of 07h:18min of sleep per night. The athletes demonstrated higher sleep fragmentation (39.26 ± 23.66 minutes) and higher sleep latency (30.88 ± 16.19 minutes) during pre-competition training days. Additionally, the athletes of individual sports demonstrated more fragmentation (p<0.001) and less sleep efficiency (p<0.001) compared athletes of team sports. However, there was no significant difference in all sleep variables between the male and female sex.
 Conclusion: The overall elite athletes presented poor sleep quality during the training periods prior to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, and individual athletes showed higher fragmentation and poorer sleep efficiency compared to team athletes.

The Sleep Parameters of Olympic Athletes: Characteristics and Assessment Instruments

“…From this perspective, Narciso et al [17] [16,17], which may be a concern for the health area and the technical committee of the teams, considering that the low quality of sleep or insufficient sleep can be related to injuries in soccer athletes, for example [30,31].…”

“…Regarding subjective parameters, two studies [17,25] demonstrated that the most predominant chronotype is the indifferent one (78% and 64%, respectively), while one study [18] presented a 22% prevalence of daytime sleepiness. Subjective poor sleep quality was 49% in one of the studies [18] and 53% in the other study [19], demonstrating that from a combined sample of 263…”

“…Regarding subjective instruments to assess the sleep of Olympic athletes, the use of the PSQI [18,19], HOQ [17,25], ESS [18], Sleep Complaints Questionnaire [16], likert scale to assess sleep quality [21] and sleep diary [21,24]. These tools are mainly self-assessment and aim to assess various sleep-related parameters.…”

“…Regarding limitations and future perspectives, although most studies have used objective methods to assess sleep, the study by Silva et al [16], which was the only one to evaluate with polysomnography, demonstrated that from a sample of 146 Olympic athletes, the average TST was 05:31 h, indicating a TST well below the other studies [17,24]. This difference may have occurred due to the evaluation method; however, to have greater clarity regarding the sleep characteristics of these athletes, more studies investigating sleep with polysomnography would be necessary.…”

“…Of the 12 articles included, three articles are about the sleep characteristics of Olympic athletes [17,18], one is about the differences between the sleep of Olympic athletes compared to the sleep of non-athletes [12], one article studies the relationship between sleep and psychological aspects [19], three articles examine the sleep of Olympic athletes during training periods [20][21][22], and four articles are on sleep interventions in Olympic athletes [23][24][25][26].…”