Optimising female athletes’ sleep

: The role of sleep hygiene interventions on performance and recovery

Abstract

Sleep has been shown to affect many parameters of physical performance and female athletes commonly demonstrate worse sleep indices than male counterparts. This thesis aims to present applied research investigating novel areas of sleep hygiene (SH), with the overarching aim of improving sleep factors for female athletes. Study 1 first investigated whether chronotype affects SH status, with secondary aims to investigate which areas of SH were most problematic for female athletes, also considering potential differences in sleep between sport types. Morning chronotype predicted for an improved SH status, whilst conversely, being an evening chronotype predicted for a worse SH status. Investigation of secondary aims concluded team sport athletes demonstrated a significantly worse SH status than individual sport athletes, whilst common to all participants, three areas of SH were identified as being most problematic – sleep regularity, active behaviours in the evening and psychological factors. Considering the prevalence of self-reported sleep parameters across many sports, Study 2 assessed agreement between self-reported and actigraphy reported sleep duration and quality. For sleep duration, evident disagreement was observed between the two methods, with a tendency for participants to overestimate their self-reported sleep duration by 32 min (mean bias -0.54), and a potential disagreement range of ~2 hours (limits of agreement +24 min to −90 min). For sleep quality, number of wakings was the only actigraph reported variable that significantly predicted self-reported sleep quality, suggesting low self-report scores of this factor could indicate the need for SH interventions. Study 3 and 4 investigated methods of SH education, using evidence from Study 1 in the development of SH interventions, and evidence from Study 2 in the development of methodological approaches. Study 3 was novel in investigating whether SH interventions can affect strength and power outcomes, and also in the comparison of SH education methods. Individualised SH education was superior to group-based interventions for improvement of sleep factors. Furthermore, improved sleep affected jump performance, whilst maximal strength was not significantly affected. Study 3 findings led to considering time-efficient methods of individualised SH education, given potential constraints to individualised approaches in many settings. Study 4 developed an individualised, media-based SH intervention. Significant improvements in multiple sleep parameters were observed post-intervention, whilst also presenting the novel finding that SH improved sleep factors for female athletes’ mid-season. Collective findings present the importance of SH education in improving female athletes sleep and suggest this should be delivered in an individualised manner. Additionally, practitioners should consider objective sleep monitoring, and chronotype screening within athlete monitoring. This thesis presents a branch of female athlete-specific sleep research, which has the potential to be highly impactful in the field of performance sport.

Date of Award	Dec 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Mark Hayes (Supervisor) & Neil Maxwell (Supervisor)