IN THE NEWS
Sleep in Athletics
R
ecently, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) included sleep health as part of its first official mental health position statement. Additionally, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the US published its first position paper on sleep health for athletes with recommendations. Three professionals comment on these strides in sleep health.
"OVERTRAINING SYNDROME"
Dr. Charles Samuels is the Medical Director of the Centre for Sleep & Human Performance and The Sleep Institute Ltd., as well as a Clinical Assistant Professor Dr. Charles Samuels of Medicine and Adjunct Professor at Kinesiology University of Calgary. Dr. Samuels has been in the field of sleep medicine for 25 years. “Since the late 1990s,” Dr. Samuels begins, “I have been seeing elite athletes from all types of sport for sleep-related issues. Universally, athletes have recognized and appreciated that they can get help with sleep which translates into better physical and mental health as well as training capacity and
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competitive performance.” Dr. Samuels notes that from the beginning, it was a challenge to educate athletes, coaches and support staff about the role of sleep in recovery of athletes. Recovery is key in improving training capacity, sport performance, and resilience. In recent years however, sleep has become a recognized and important factor in managing athletes. “At the beginning, it was myself, Cheri Mah and Shonna Halson who brought sleep to the forefront in athletics. However, our efforts fell on the heels of Drs. Tom Reilly and James Waterhouse who were instrumental in developing this field of research,” Dr. Samuels explains. In 2005, Dr. Samuels was approached by the Sports Science group at the University of Calgary to help address an emerging problem the sport physiologists and physicians had recognized in National Team and Olympic Team athletes. The issue was dubbed “overtraining syndrome,” but has since become known as under-recovery rather than overtraining. Dr. Samuels says, “Overtraining syndrome was a consistent finding of sleep disturbance in these athletes. For the most part, at the beginning, this was seen in swimmers and cross country skiers. This led to the parallel development of a Sleep Education Program and Research Project on sleep, recovery and performance supported by the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary and the University of
