Interesting article on sleep deprivation by the Tim Weißbach from Pfadsucher.com on his website.
As Tim describes it is funny how there are many studies on sleep before an event and how it affects athletes’ performance but not too many about sleep during an event. Perhaps there are not too many sports where events last longer than a day.
Performance in events concerning sleep is probably also influenced on the experience of an endurance athlete. It all comes down to what works for you as an athlete as it is very personal ad depends also on the situation and the period prior to the event. Some of us don’t need a whole lot of sleep until the third night while some already experience problems in their first night.
A five-minute powernap will reset your brain and bring back focus to a certain extent while a full sleepcycle of 45-60 minutes will even bring back physical strength and makes you perform better. Sleeping more than that will not by definition make you perform a lot better. It might even take your performance down because your body will go into recovery mode too much and it will take longer before your broken body will be back in racemode again.
CLICK HERE for the article from Tim on his website.
There is a lot more interesting stuff there… worth browsing…
