Connection Between Sleep and Athletic Performance

In the last few decades much knowledge has been accumulated on the connection between healthy, sufficient sleep and overall health, cognitive function, memory and job or school performance, motor vehicle accidents and work accidents. There has been growing awareness recently of the connection between physical activity and competitive sports performance, and the amount and quality of sleep. Despite the dearth of scientific studies, there is a constant effort to improve understanding in this field. An appropriate procedure designed to evaluate the influence of the quality and amount of sleep on ability and athletic performance must fulfill a number of basic requirements: 1. Isolating the influence of components related to sleep homeostasis and factors relating to circadian rhythm. 2. Neutralizing as much as possible the influence of motivation on the evaluation - one must presumably include a significant competitive event (it is not always possible to do a simple extrapolation between physiological measurements and competitive performance). 3. Isolating and canceling as much as possible additional factors affecting performance, such as: home advantage, weather, injury and field conditions. Athletic activity includes not just competitions but also training towards competitions, since it is difficult to control for influences of competitions and other occasional events, in this study the investigators focus on evaluation of the connection between sleep and athletic performance in training. Towards the end of adolescence, youth are busy in multiple activities related to studies, social obligations and athletic activity. This is also the age they learn to drive. This is an age in which physiologically a person needs more sleep relative to at other ages (9.25 hours of sleep a day), and paradoxically due to the multiple obligations the amount of sleep is lower than needed. Beyond the effect on mood, cognitive performance and memory, sleep deprivation causes far-reachin