Int J Sports Med 2024; 45(10): 715-723 DOI: 10.1055/a-2233-0323
Review
The Sleep Parameters of Olympic Athletes: Characteristics and
Assessment Instruments
Marco Túlio de Mello
1
Sports, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
Eduardo Stieler
1
Sports, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
Isadora Grade
1
Sports, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
André Fernandes Chaves Filho
1
Sports, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
Gabriel Mendes
2
Physiotherapy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
Natália Ituassu
2
Physiotherapy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
,
Andressa Silva
1
Sports, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte,
Brazil
› Author AffiliationsFunding
This work was supported by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível
Superior under Grant number 0001; and Ministério do Esporte (Governo Federal,
Brazil) under Grant number 58000.008978/2018–37 and 71000.056251/2020–49;
Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
This systematic review aims to identify the sleep parameters of Olympic athletes
and the instruments used to assess and monitor the sleep of these athletes. The
search was conducted until February 2023 and was performed in PubMed, Web of
Science, and Scopus databases. This systematic review has included studies that
investigated at least one of the following sleep parameters: total sleep time
(TST), sleep onset latency (SOL), sleep efficiency (SE), awakenings after sleep
onset (WASO), quality of sleep, daytime sleepiness, and chronotype; the
participants were Olympic athletes. The search returned a total of 280 studies.
After screening based on exclusion and inclusion criteria, 11 studies were
included. The main results demonstrate that Olympic athletes have TST of
06:10 h, SE of 84%, SOL of 28 min, and WASO of 49 min. The most predominant
chronotype is indifferent; over half of the athletes have poor sleep quality and
complaints. Furthermore, actigraphy was the most used method to assess sleep. It
is concluded that Olympic athletes have TST, SE, and WASO poor than the
recommended values. In addition, sleep complaints and poor sleep quality were
also observed. Among the objective sleep assessment methods, actigraphy was the
method most frequently used in this population.
Key words
training -
sports -
recovery -
chronotype -
travel
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