Good and restful sleep is of enormous importance for top athletes and can enable an increase in performance of up to three percent – this can make the difference between victory and defeat in certain sports. During sleep, muscles regenerate and grow, movements or other things are internalized and mental strength is gained. Lack of sleep or poor sleep quality, on the other hand, have a counterproductive effect on the ability to concentrate, mood, reaction time and performance. As a result, you become physically ill.
However, if you sail around the world alone for months, you don’t have time for hours of sleep. Solo circumnavigator Boris Herrmann therefore trained himself to sleep only briefly, but several times a day. But even the nap in the final phase of the Vendée Globe 2021 was Herrmann’s undoing: while he was sleeping, his boat collided with a fishing trawler. As a result, Herrmann missed out on a podium finish. The technical monitoring devices had not sounded an alarm.
Other athletes also adapt their sleep to their specific needs: Boxers, for example, change their sleeping rhythm so that they are particularly efficient during a competition late in the evening – contrary to their internal clock.
Professional soccer players like Cristiano Ronaldo or Robert Lewandowski work with sleep therapists, sleep several times a day according to sophisticated sleep concepts and expect their bodies to regenerate quickly.
Polyphasic sleep model particularly popular
Sleep research distinguishes three different sleep models: monophasic, biphasic and polyphasic. Most people sleep an average of seven hours at a time at night and therefore only have one sleep phase (monophasic). Some add an afternoon nap (biphasic). What is more typical for babies – namely three to six sleep phases per day of around 90 minutes each – is called the polyphasic sleep model. And some competitive athletes are adopting this concept.
World soccer player Robert Lewandowski swears by special sleep plans
It usually takes two to three weeks to adapt to this new sleep pattern, says Christian Zepp from the Psychological Institute of the German Sport University in Cologne. “You have to practice that, it’s hard work. But in the end, a professional athlete will do everything to improve his or her performance.”
Leonardo da Vinci is also said to have slept polyphasically and then created his masterpieces, explains the sports scientist: “If you train yourself to do this, the body also learns more quickly to enter the important sleep phase and, for example, to break down its metabolic products more quickly.”
Sticking to a sleep schedule is important
Athletes often complain about sleep disorders – for example because of psychological pressure, stress before competitions, too intensive training or strenuous travel. However, interval sleep models are not absolutely necessary to increase performance. Zepp explains that athletes would sleep much better if they stuck to their sleep schedule and sleep hygiene. This includes a certain time to fall asleep, a cool room, a light evening meal, no distractions from cell phones and much more.
But not everyone has this discipline. Also because of the corona situation, the sleeping rhythm of some athletes was disturbed, many went to bed later than planned, reports Zepp. “In 2020 I had a lot – especially young athletes – who didn’t stick to anything anymore. They then went to bed at three in the morning and at some point wondered why they weren’t performing anymore.”
Different studies on power naps
Healthy sleep is cyclical: every 60 to 90 minutes there is a sequence of light, normal and deep sleep phases, each cycle ends with what is known as REM sleep (rapid eye movement/dream sleep), at the end of which you usually wake up. So you are not in deep sleep the entire night, this only accounts for about 25 percent of the total sleep time, explains the Cologne sleep researcher and psychologist Christine Hamm: “While longer deep sleep phases can be seen in the first half of the night, they become clearer in the second half of the night sleep becomes more easily disturbed, the waking phases accumulate. We know from basic research that we normally wake up up to 25 times a night.”
A power nap can be helpful, according to NASA
The good sleeper usually does not notice this because he falls asleep again quickly. Poor sleepers, i.e. people with problems falling asleep and/or sleeping through the night, often lie awake longer during the nightly waking phases and can remember it well. “Those who tend to have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep often need ‘higher sleep pressure’,” says Hamm. It really hurts these people if they sleep during the day: “This messes up the sleep-wake cycle.” The regularity of sleeping times is an important prerequisite for healthy sleep, explains the somnologist. Even the afternoon nap, which is relaxing for the good sleeper and corresponds to a natural biological midday slump, is rather a shame here.
According to NASA study a power nap can increase reaction speed and concentration. According to other studies, however, several daytime naps can have a negative effect on health because they do not correspond to human nature. Man is a diurnal being. The day-night rhythm is controlled by hormones. The stress hormone cortisol increases during the day phase and the sleep hormone melatonin during the night phase. Many researchers therefore consider sleeping at night to be more restful overall than the model developed by sleep coach Nick Littlehales for Cristiano Ronaldo, which envisages several sleep phases of 90 minutes each, which are also spread out over the course of the day.
Hans-Günter Weeß, head of the interdisciplinary sleep center at the Pfalzklinikum, questioned Littlehale’s training on SWR. Such coaches often only have the knowledge they have read, and this is particularly evident in this case. “I firmly believe that Ronaldo never used these sleep cycles, otherwise his athletic performance would not be what we have seen in recent years.”
Viewed neutrally, sleep training is the same as other areas of mental training. The exact impact on performance is difficult to measure. That’s why the following applies in sport: whoever wins is right.