In my last post I hoped to provide some “safe” recommendations for supplementation of an athlete’s diet, IF THE DIET WAS FOUND TO BE DEFICIENT IN SOME NUTRIENTS! I hope I got across the importance that supplementation, like strength, speed, power, skill, endurance, etc. SHOULD always be based upon “individual” NEEDS of each athlete WITH careful analysis of an individual’s diet and sport/exercise needs.
Adding information from all the past posts allows us to now explore the ingredients
necessary for, a successful, thorough and well-balanced Long-Term Athlete Development Plan (LTADP).
I spent many of the
first posts on FMS and AMSC skills and
their importance to building the foundational
movements that most successfully transfer to a variety, if not all, competitive
sports.
So, we can start our ingredient list with SKILLS. By using progressive activities that require
movements that involve acceleration, deceleration, pushing, pulling, resisting
and overcoming, starting, stopping, change of direction, jumping and landing,
we WILL develop STRENGTH, SPEED,
SUPPLENESS, STAMINA to enhance Skill
performance in a variety of sports skills.
Attention to BOTH adoption and consistent application of a
well-balanced Diet IS A MUST in
order to meet optimal physical development and daily energy requirements.
Time Management
that emphasizes academic development
work through adoption of consistent, daily study time-blocks is OF EQUAL importance in developing THE STUDENT-ATHLETE.
These study times need to be planned for KEY times of the
day that best insure optimal concentration and focus that targets academic work loads that represent all the
various subjects in the student’s current academic schedule.
Development of optimal Sleep
habits/patterns MAY BE, in spite of my recent posts, the MOST NEGLECTED of
all the ingredients NEEDED for optimal physical,
mental, emotional, academic and
social growth and maturation. This holds true from early childhood and
pre-adolescent to adolescent stages in the lives of student-athletes. Sleep may even INCREASE in importance
FOR SERIOUS ATHLETES from late teens into Adulthood.
So, let’s make a list of the BENEFITS OF OPTIMUM LEVELS OF SLEEP for all children and especially
“developing athletes” participating in a wide variety of sports throughout
the school year.
BENEFITS
OF SLEEP
1)
During sleep, the highest levels of growth hormones (significantly the
anabolic hormones responsible for skeletal muscle growth/maintenance).
2)
Sleep has been proven to have both psychological
and physiological restorative effects.
3)
Sleep is a critical ingredient of an athlete’s adaptation to training as well as recovery,
preparation and regeneration for training.
4)
Sleep is also a critical regulator of Central Nervous System and Cognitive functions (especially
for academic thought processes).
PROBLEMS WITH LACK OF SLEEP
1)
Sleep deprivation reduces anabolic (tissue building) hormone levels AND increases catabolic (tissue degrading)
hormone concentrations.
2)
Lack of sleep inhibits restoration after
training by increasing inflammation and sympathetic
nervous system activity (resulting in higher heart rate & blood
pressure levels among other factors) which lead to impaired strength and power outputs, muscle glycogen replenishment AND
impaired COGNITIVE performance (critical for daily academic development).
3)
Sleep deprivation can also result in loss of high-level sport skill and a decrease in motivation
necessary for training.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED
THAT FOLLOWING A SHORTENED NIGHT’S SLEEP, COGNITIVE AND MOTOR SKILL PERFORMANCE
CAN BE ENHANCED WITH THE ADDITION OF A SHORT NAP!
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DIRECTLY BELOW IS AN
ENTERTAINING AND VALUABLE TWITTER CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO WELL KNOWN
“LEARNING” and “SPORT” INVESTIGATORS…..ENJOY
When Genius Slept!!!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Genius Slept
.@DavidEpstein Dr. Ferrari knew all about
sleep/HGH. He once told @DanielCoyle "What are they going to do next? Ban
naps?"
“@TheRaceRadio: @DavidEpstein @DanielCoyle Sleep is #1 legal
performance enhancer for both mind and body.”
reminds me of entirely
overlooked data pt from so-called 10,000-hours study: top performers slept 5.4
more hrs/week vs bottom
Brilliance, it seems, is the product of a well-rested mind, not artistic all-nighters.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please access the
articles attached to the end of this post as well as under SPECIFIC TOPIC PAGES
in the column to the right of this post: Articles #2 and #6.
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Sleep or swim? Early-morning training severely restricts the amount of sleep obtained by elite swimmers.
Authors
Sargent C, et al. Eur J Sport Sci. 2014;14
Suppl 1:S310-5. doi: 10.1080/17461391.2012.696711. Epub 2012 Jul 6.
Abstract
Good
sleep is essential for optimal performance, yet few studies have examined the
sleep/wake behavior of elite athletes. The aim of this study was to assess the
impact of early-morning training on the amount of sleep obtained by world-class
swimmers at the Australian Institute for Sport.
Sleep
in Elite Athletes and Nutritional Interventions to Enhance Sleep
By Shona L. Halson AIS, May 3, 2014 online
Sleep has numerous
important physiological and cognitive functions that may be particularly
important to elite athletes. Recent evidence, as well as anecdotal information,
suggests that athletes may experience a reduced quality and /or quantity of
sleep. Sleep deprivation can have significant effects on athletic performance,
especially submaximal, prolonged exercise. Comprised sleep my also influence learning, memory, cognition, pain
perception, immunity and inflammation. Furthermore, changes in glucose
metabolism and neuroendocrine function as a result of chronic, partial sleep
deprivation may result in alterations in carbohydrate metabolism, appetite,
food-intake and protein synthesis. These factors can ultimately have a negative
influence on an athlete’s nutritional,
metabolic and endocrine status and hence potentially reduce athletic performance. Research has identified a number of
neurotransmitters associated with the sleep-wake cycle. Some neurotransmitters
are contained in carbohydrates, turkey and some herbs (valerian and melatonin
supplements) and MAY be of value in inducing sleep.
Below
is the abstract of the study done by the authors above from the AIS.
On
nights that preceded training days, participants went to bed at 22:05 h
(s=00:52), arose at 05:48 h (s=00:24) and obtained 5.4 h (s=1.3) of sleep. On
nights that preceded rest days, participants went to bed at 00:32 h (s=01:29),
arose at 09:47 h (s=01:47) and obtained 7.1 h (s=1.2) of sleep. Mixed model
analyses revealed that on nights prior to training days, bedtimes and get-up
times were significantly earlier (p<0.001), time spent in bed was significantly
shorter (p<0.001) and the amount of sleep obtained was significantly less
(p<0.001), than on nights prior to rest days. These
results indicate that early-morning training sessions severely restrict the
amount of sleep obtained by elite athletes. Given that chronic sleep restriction
of <6 h per night can impair psychological and physiological functioning, it
is possible that early-morning schedules actually limit the effectiveness of
training.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
BELOW
IS AN ARTICLE BY ALEX HUTCHINSON that breaks down the above study with some
USEFUL INSIGHTS.
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How Do Morning Workouts Affect
Sleep?
It's not just the night before that matters.
By
Published
April
28, 2014
The
white bars are overnight sleep; the black bars are workouts (usually twice a
day); and the grey bars are afternoon naps. What jumps out, not surprisingly,
is that the swimmers got less sleep when they had early workouts -- way less
sleep, in fact. The numbers are pretty stark: they spent 7.7 hours in bed
before training days, and 9.3 hours in bed before rest days. But that's not the
whole story: according to their sleep monitors, they actually only slept for
5.4 hours before training days, compared to 7.1 hours before rest days. That's
because they took longer to get to sleep on those nights (41 minutes versus 32
minutes), and spent more time awake in bed. That's at least in part because
they were making an effort to get to bed earlier before training days, which
makes it harder to get to sleep. It may also have to do with anxiety and stress
about the upcoming workouts.
The
funny thing, as the authors of the paper point out, is that these are full-time
athletes who have no particular need to train at 6 a.m. -- that's just what
swimmers (and rowers and triathletes, among others) do, partly as a legacy from
a time when athletes weren't full-time. It seems pretty clear that moving the
workouts an hour or two later would help these athletes get more sleep, and
probably help them perform better.
So
what does that mean for the rest of us? If you've got a job and family, you're
probably doing 6:00 a.m. workouts because you have to, not because you want to.
The biggest thing that jumps out at me in this data is the later bed times
before rest days. If you're going to bed after midnight every weekend, that
makes it harder to fall asleep when you need to on the other nights. You're
basically going in and out of jet lag once a week. Now, these swimmers were
young Aussies with an average of 22.5, so perhaps it's unreasonable to suggest
that they should be in bed by 10 p.m. every night! But if you're trying
to make early workouts work for you, then I think one of the most effective
things you can do is aim for a consistent bedtime even on nights when you don't
have an early workout, so that your body gets into a routine where the early
wake-up isn't a shock. Is that trade-off worthwhile? That's something only you
can decide.
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