The impact of sleep during the tapering period on young swimmers: A scientific investigation

Abstract

During adolescence, sleep is essential for physical and cognitive development. However, modern lifestyles often disrupt sleep patterns in young people, potentially impacting athletic performance. Swimming, with its demanding training schedules, presents unique challenges to sleep patterns and may influence performance. This study investigates the role of sleep in the performance of young swimmers during the tapering period. Nineteen athletes participated in this study, but only 15 completed it. The data were collected 21 days before the target competition, when the athletes were already engaged in training. Based on sonography, divided into good sleep group (GSG; n=8) and poor sleep group (PSG; n=7). Athletes used an actigraph daily (for 21 days, during tapering phase) to identify sleep quality and had their performance results obtained by the International Point Score (IPS). We observed that 46.67% of the athletes had poor sleep, with no difference between genders. We identified a significant difference (p=0.001; ES=1.52; 18.65%) between week 1 and week 3 of total sleep time (TST), without showing changes in sleep efficiency (SE). Sleep latency (SL) in both groups improved, with a reduction in the difference between the groups (9.73%), and wake after sleep onset (WASO) decreased (p=0.001; ES=-1.79; 20.91%). The increase in TST, maintenance of SE, reduction of WASO, and the difference in SL between the groups, associated with the equal performance of the groups obtained by IPS, suggest better sleep quality during the period, with tapering reducing any performance differences that PSG could have compared to GSG.