Chapters authored
The Importance of Sleep in Athletes
Sleep is an essential component for athletes’ recovery from fatigue, due especially to its physiological and psychological restorative effects. Moreover, sleep is extremely important for numerous biological functions, and sleep deprivation can have significant effects on athletic performance in short-, medium-, and long term. For example, and considering the physiology of sleep for athletes, some hormonal responses that take place in the lead up to and during sleep (e.g., growth hormone—important role in muscle growth and repair) may be affected following exercise (i.e., training and competition), especially when compared with non-athlete’s populations. Thus, monitoring sleep is also crucial to understand responses to training and readiness, enabling appropriate planning. Importantly, sleep monitoring also intends to reduce the risk of injury, illness, and nonfunctional overreaching. Moreover, an “individual approach” in athletes monitoring could help in better prescribe training contents and more adequately manage fatigue, as well as recommend pertinent post-match recovery strategies, such as sleep hygiene interventions. Overall, for understanding the athlete’s sleep patterns/responses and to optimize the recovery strategies, it is crucial for comprehensive monitoring of his/her health, performance, fitness, and fatigue status.
Part of the book: Exercise Physiology
Assessment of Autonomic Cardiac Activity in Athletes
Athletes, coaches, and supporting staff should assume a scientific approach to both designing and monitoring training programs. Proper load monitoring is essential to determine whether an athlete is adapting to a training program and to minimize the risk of increasing non-functional overreaching, illness, or injury. To gain an understanding of training and competition demands and their effects on the athlete, various potential physiological variables are available. Nonetheless, very few of them have robust scientific evidence to support their use. Therefore, this chapter will discuss the use of non-invasive and time-efficient methods to record and/or calculate heart rate variability (HRV) in athletes. HRV variables can provide detailed information about positive and negative adaptions over short and long periods throughout the competitive season. The accumulated knowledge regarding the importance of HRV has led both monitoring variables to become popular strategies among elite athletes, coaches, and supporting staff.
Part of the book: Cardiorespiratory Fitness