Published in:
Open Access 01-06-2021 | Sports | Sleep Breathing Physiology and Disorders • Short Communication
Extreme sports performance for more than a week with severely fractured sleep
Published in: Sleep and Breathing | Issue 2/2021
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Purpose
Severely fractured sleep is mostly portrayed negatively, but investigations in extreme sports show that humans can maintain performance with a minimum of sleep. With two cases of long-lasting extreme sports performances, we demonstrate that severely fragmented sleep does not necessarily lead to a deterioration of physical and cognitive performance.
Methods
We performed continuous polysomnography on a 34 year-old skier for 11 days and nights during a world record attempt in long-term downhill skiing and monitored a 32 year-old cyclist during the Race Across America for 8.5 days via sleep and activity logs.
Results
The skier slept fractured fashion in 15–16 naps with a daily average of 6 h consisting of 77% in sleep stage 1 and 2, 11% in stage 3, and 13% in stage REM. The cyclist slept a total of 7 h and 52 min in 8.5 days, split up into 11 short naps and 6 sleep periods. The average duration of napping was 8.8 min and of sleep 64.2 min.
Conclusions
These two cases demonstrate that outstanding performances are possible with severely fractured sleep and/or sleep deprivation. In well-trained athletes, breaking new recordsis possible despite extreme sleep habits.