Sleep and Performance in Professional Athletes

Abstract

Purpose of review: Sleep is an essential human behavior that plays a key role in proper biopsychosocial development as well as short- and long-term biological, physical, psychological, and cognitive health. Sleep plays a key role in athletic performance, influencing an athlete's ability to train, recover, and perform, as well as their overall wellness. Over the recent decade, the awareness of sleep's import has penetrated just about every professional sport domain. The purpose of the review was to identify and synthesize the literature published within the past 5 years (2018-2022) that relates to sleep and performance in professional athletes. Literature related to nonprofessional, high-level athletes (e.g., collegiate; Olympic) was omitted as well as those associated with non-traditional professional sports (e.g., eSports).

Recent findings: Results from 38 articles were incorporated into this review, which covered (1) the sleep's role in the training, physical injury prevention and recovery, competitive performance, and mental health of professional athletes, (2) common sleep problems and disorders in professional athletes, and (3) the impact of unique challenges from training, travel, competition, and other factors on sleep health. Additionally, we provide an orientation to utilized strategies and interventions to assist with sleep health in professional athletes, as well as conclude with a commentary on critical steps forward.

Summary: Sleep plays a critically important role in the training, recovery, performance, and overall wellness of professional athletes. Professional athletes are vulnerable to a variety of sleep-related problems and disorders, due to unique factors related to training, travel, and competition, among other factors. Improved, standardized research methodology and partnerships between professional athletes, coaches, teams, and organizations and researchers are necessary to advance the knowledge of sleep and performance in professional athletes, including identifying sport-specific differences and variation across individual characteristics, as well as developing individualizable, dynamic, and appropriate interventions for improving sleep health among professional athletes.

Keywords: Athletes; Circadian; Fatigue; Health; Performance; Professionals; Sleep; Travel.

Fig. 1

A schematic depiction of the complex, bidirectional relationship between sleep health and performance, along with the core influencing factors. Beyond actual physical and cognitive performance during competition, sleep health can improve performance through more consistent and higher quality training, reduced risk for injury and better recovery, enhanced mental health contributing to better motivation, attention, emotional regulation, and other psychological characteristics beneficial to performance, and resiliency to the deleterious effects of travel. Yet, professional athletes experience unique challenges related to training demands, heightened injury risk, constant pressure and stress that can degrade mental health, and travel-related factors (e.g., physical and mental fatigue from long distance travel; circadian misalignment) that have the potential to negatively influence sleep health and performance directly and indirectly. Relevant references to focal literature are included, with these numbers corresponding to the order listed in the references section