Deconstructing athletes’ sleep: A systematic review of the influence of age, sex, athletic expertise, sport type, and season on sleep characteristics

Purpose: This systematic review aims to describe objective sleep parameters for athletes under different conditions and address potential sleep issues in this specific population. Methods: PubMed and Scopus were searched from inception to April 2019. Included studies measured sleep only via objective evaluation tools such as polysomnography or actigraphy. The modified version of the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used for the quality assessment of the studies. Results: Eighty-one studies were included, of which 56 were classified as medium quality, 5 as low quality, and 20 as high quality. A total of 1830 athletes were monitored over 18,958 nights. Average values for sleep-related parameters were calculated for all athletes according to sex, age, athletic expertise level, training season, and type of sport. Athletes slept on average 7.2 ± 1.1 h/night (mean ± SD)?, with 86.3% ± 6.8% sleep efficiency (SE). In all datasets, the athletes’ mean total sleep time was <8 h. SE was low for young athletes (80.3% ± 8.8%). Reduced SE was attributed to high wake after sleep onset rather than sleep onset latency. During heavy training periods, sleep duration and SE were on average 36 min and 0.8% less compared to pre-season and 42 min and 3.0% less compared to in-season training periods, respectively. Conclusion: Athletes’ sleep duration was found to be short with low SE, in comparison to the general consensus for non-athlete healthy adults. Notable sleep issues were revealed in young athletes. Sleep quality and architecture tend to change across different training periods.