The Effects of Sleep Patterns on a Student Athlete's Perceived Exertion and Training Impulse

Emma Harris

eah025@bucknell.edu

Bucknell University

The Effects of Sleep Patterns on a Student Athlete's Perceived Exertion and Training Impulse

As finely tuned as collegiate coaches would like their athletes to be, most assessments of athletic skill and fitness levels in collegiate athletes is based on performance in competitions and difficult practices. However, with advancements in tracking technologies like heart rate monitors as well as simple self-recording methods, competitive collegiate programs are able to monitor and analyze performance patterns and identify individual athletes’ weaknesses as well as their strengths.  An especially important performance pattern that should be considered when monitoring collegiate athletes is sleep patterns. Numerous research studies as well as experience and common knowledge have determined that lack of sleep can lead to the inability to maintain every day cognitive and motor functions.  Monitoring sleep patterns and athletes’ training response and competitive readiness have been done for many professional and Olympic athletes. However, there is not a lot of published research regarding collegiate athletes, especially collegiate field hockey athletes.  The work presented here shows the correlation between sleep patterns and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) as well as training impulse (TRIMP) for female, collegiate, division 1 field hockey athletes.  The rate of perceived exertion or RPE is a method for quantifying training load. For this study, RPE was recorded once a day and measured by whole numbers on a scale of 1 to 10.  Training impulse (TRIMP) is used as a unit of physical exertion.  TRIMP is calculated by using training duration, max resting heart rate as well as average heart rate.

Maintaining a healthy sleep pattern is especially important to athletes as sleep deprivation can have significant effects on performance, heart rate, perception of effort, motivation as well as other basic human functions.  Monitoring sleep patterns can help athletes as well as coaches detect and prevent significant performance and health problems.  Taking into account the correlation between sleep patterns, RPE and TRIMP found in this study, athletes and coaches can work to improve their sleep schedules to enhance their performance and training methods.