Athletes underestimate sleep quantity during daytime nap opportunities

Area of Science:

• Sports Science
• Sleep Medicine
• Exercise Physiology

Background:

• Accurate sleep assessment is crucial for athlete recovery and performance.
• Self-reported sleep duration is commonly used but may lack precision.
• Understanding discrepancies between subjective and objective sleep is vital for sports science.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare athletes' self-reported sleep duration with objective polysomnography data during naps.
• To quantify the extent to which soccer players underestimate their sleep duration.
• To investigate sleep underestimation across different nap durations (60-min and 120-min).

Main Methods:

• Twelve trained male soccer players participated in the study.
• Sleep duration was measured using polysomnography (objective) and a single self-report question.
• Objective and subjective sleep durations were assessed during two controlled nap opportunities (60-min and 120-min).

Main Results:

• Athletes significantly underestimated their sleep duration during both 60-min (p=0.004) and 120-min (p=0.001) nap opportunities.
• Soccer players underestimated sleep by approximately 10 minutes for every hour of nap opportunity.
• Objective sleep duration consistently exceeded self-reported duration in this cohort.

Conclusions:

• Soccer players demonstrate a tendency to underestimate their sleep duration during short recovery naps.
• The findings highlight a potential gap in accurately assessing athlete sleep using self-report methods.
• Further research is needed to determine if this underestimation extends to main nighttime sleep in athletes.