ScienceDaily (Jun. 10, 2008) — Getting extra sleep over an extended period of time improves athletic performance, mood and alertness, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9 at the SLEEP 2008 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) in Baltimore, Md.
Participants in this ongoing study were five healthy students on the Stanford University men’s and women’s swimming teams. For the first two weeks of the study, the students maintained their usual sleep-wake pattern. The athletes then extended their sleep to 10 hours per day for six to seven weeks.
Athletic performance was assessed after each regularly scheduled swim practice. After obtaining extra sleep, athletes swam a 15-meter meter sprint 0.51 seconds faster, reacted 0.15 seconds quicker off the blocks, improved turn time by 0.10 seconds and increased kick strokes by 5.0 kicks. (Full Story at sd)
Those results are pretty impressive, but 10 hours is a long time to sleep. I wonder if taking a nap in the middle of the day would have similar results (assuming the total sleep per day equaled 10 hours).
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