1010 Sleep Related Recovery in Athletes: The Role of Heart Rate Variability Parameters

Abstract

Introduction: Sleep is vital for musculoskeletal recovery, learning and emotional balance of athletes. Insufficient sleep is related to performance deterioration. Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis upon waking up is widely used as a recovery measure in athletes. We aimed at evaluating sleep HRV parameters as a measure of recovery in athletes. Methods: Observational study of sleep HRV in 58 professional athletes (AT) and 57 age matched individuals from the general population (GP) who monitored their sleep using a mobile application (Sleeprate) and a heart rate sensor (Polar H7) was performed. 460 nights were analyzed. Sleep analysis was obtained using an HRV-based validated algorithm. The HRV parameters evaluated were: (1) RMSSDavg: the average rootmean square differences of successive RR intervals (RMSSD) over the whole night, and (2) RMSSDlast5: the RMSSD for the last 5 minutes of the recording. The variability and differences between the two RMSSD parameters were further studied in 386 recordings of 9 athletes who recorded more than 20 nights each. Results: Total sleep time (TST) of AT (417±45minutes) was significantly longer than that of GP (383±47minutes, P