Assessment of sleep in athletes

When assessing sleep health in athletes, a comprehensive evaluation of sleep to include sleep duration, continuity, timing, daytime alertness, and sleep satisfaction is recommended. Recent research highlighted in this chapter indicates that a “one-size-fits all” approach is likely to provide limited benefit. Thus, a comprehensive sleep assessment should include subjective, as well as carefully chosen objective measures of sleep. Athletes themselves, clinicians, coaches, scientists, and trainers must, at a minimum, consider the impacts of assessment burden as well as decide which assessment method best allows them to evaluate an athlete's sleep health and athletic performance. Based on sport and competition level, these considerations intensify as athletes can experience sleep disturbances for a multitude of sports-related factors, such as overtraining, injuries, precompetition anxiety or nervousness, postcompetition exhaustion, elation, or aspects inherent to specific sports. Each of these sports-related factors should be considered inherent to the sleep assessment in athletes. When developing a sleep assessment protocol for athletes, careful consideration must be given to the sports-related factors that can impact an athlete's sleep and when possible, athletes should establish a baseline sleep profile in the off-season with the opportunity to adapt or modify preseason and competition season. Given current limitations, it is recommended that an optimal assessment of the sleep health of athletes involves a sleep medicine expert with knowledge and expertise in this developing area.