In this blog post I will inform you of factors that can influence the amount of sleep that teen athletes have. Sleep deprivation in teens can affect the amount of sports-related injuries that teen athletes are at risk of.
What is the appropriate amount of sleep for teens?
8 to 10 hours per day
Why is sleep important for youth athletes?
Sleep is important because it is a time when the body repairs and regenerates from the day. Learning requires sleep as well as all the activities that youth do daily. Sleep helps with mood and helps our bodies function, it also helps reaction time which can be a necessity for sports.
What are some factors that influence sleep in youth athletes?
Type of sport: The type of sport that a teenager plays might influence how much sleep deprivation affects them. Some studies show that a lack of sleep in youth who play sports with short bursts of energy may not affect them as much as youth who play sports with long amounts of effort.
Training and academic schedule: Youth athletes can have busy schedules that cause them to need more amounts of sleep to be fully functioning. Training schedules can also be very demanding for teen athletes providing little time for rest.
Travel: Young athletes who are on traveling teams might find it harder to get enough sleep as they are constantly moving around from place to place.
How does a decrease in teens' sleep cause an increase in sports injury risks?
A study done by the Minnesota Sleep Society discovered that adolescent athletes who slept 8 or more hours per night were 68% less likely to be injured than athletes who slept less. The study was done by surveying 160 student-athletes from grade levels from 7-12. In this study, they concluded that athletes who slept less than 8 hours had a 1.7 times more likely chance to have an injury compared to those who slept more than 8 hours. With the study, it was also concluded that there was an increase in the risk of injury as the grades of the student-athletes increased.
The study below shows the relationship between the amount of sleep a student athlete gets and the amount of injuries they have.
The results of this study show that the injuries a player would get for getting 6 hours of sleep were 4 times the amount that a player would get if they slept 9 hours a day.
Other studies suggest similar results:
What are some tips for improving sleep in youth athletes?
Some tips that could be helpful for youth athletes to get more sleep are: less technology before bed, bedtime routines, and scheduling frequently. By following these couple of tips as well as following the recommended amount of sleep per night injuries can be significantly prevented.
How does this topic relate to youth injury prevention?
Youth injury prevention can be a variety of different things but the importance of sleep is definitely a prevention technique as more sleep causes mental and physical benefits and if children get the right amount it can prevent injuries. Not only can it prevent sports-related injuries but a good amount of sleep can also prevent mental and emotional injuries in youth.
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