The Effects of Sleep on Athletic Performance

Abstract

This experiment is going to investigate the effect of receiving less than one rapid eye movement (REM) cycle of sleep. To do so, we are going to have male gymnasts, around college age, perform a routine on a pommel horse after completing various amounts of REM cycles. The question being investigated is how receiving less than one REM cycle of sleep will affect the strength and reaction time of an individual compared to others who complete one REM cycle or more.This will be tested by judging the overall performance of the pommel horse routine. Those with less sleep should have a slower reaction time, resulting in more errors than those with a full night of sleep, however, there peak strength should not have a significant change. Without a full REM cycle of sleep, the reaction time will be reduced resulting in the overall athletic performance being hindered. This experiment is going to provide a better understanding of sleep patterns that can benefit or suppress an athlete’s overall performance, which is essential for optimum training and competing.

Introduction

Sleep is one of the many important processes a human body goes through to function. The amount of sleep is crucial for quality human performance (Arabameri and Taheri, 2012). There are two stages of sleep: non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM). The two stages of sleep are characterized by changes in electrical signals in the brain, eye movements, and muscle movements (Rosenthal, 2002). The changes of electrical signals are measured with an instrument called electroencephalograph (EEG), the changes in eye movement is measured with an instrument called an electrooculogram (EOG), and the changes in muscle movement is measured with an electromyogram (EMG). Research has discovered six stages of sleep, including a pre-sleeping stage, each sleep stage distinguished by distinctive brain wave frequencies (Strickland, 2001). Stage 0 is the introduction to the...