Comparison of sleep between youth elite amateur athletes and professional athletes

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that professional athletes seem to experience significant sleeping problems. However, little is still known about the occurrence of sleeping challenges at different stages of an athletic career. This descriptive study aimed to compare the sleep of professional athletes with younger elite amateur athletes. A total of 401 sportsmen, 173 youth elite amateur athletes and 228 professional athletes fulfilled a validated questionnaire. The self-estimated quality of sleep (on a linear scale 0–10) was significantly better in youth, being 7.9 compared to 7.4 (p < 0.001). The professional athletes had a significantly higher risk for sleeping problems, especially during the competitive season (OR = 7.3, 95% confidence interval 4.1–12.9) and they also used significantly more sleep medications (OR = 8.3, 95% confidence interval 1.7–4.1). Interestingly, majority of youth athletes (85.4%) had received adequate sleep counselling compared with professional athletes (58.1%), (p < 0.001). Furthermore, 75.8% of professional athletes considered that additional sleep counselling would improve their performance compared with only 45.6% of youth athletes (p < 0.001). Our study demonstrates that compared with the younger counterparts, professional athletes experience impaired sleep quality and significantly more sleeping problems. There may be various underlying factors to induce the problems. The early intervention with sleep counselling may play an important role in preventing these problems and, therefore, it is recommended to be integrated in athletes’ overall training process.