24 INSIDE FOOTBALL Wednesday August 14, 2013

DERMOTT Brereton recently commented on 1116 SEN that James Hird must be looking forward to putting his head

on his pillow and thinking about something else.

The stress of the ASADA enquiry would no doubt pervade Hird’s thoughts, and those of everyone involved in saga, during more waking hours than they care to count.

But you don’t have to be in the midst of the biggest scandal to rock the AFL to have trouble sleeping.

Difficulty getting to sleep, quality sleep and long enough sleep are enduring problems for athletes the world over, and it’s a problem not always managed well.

Duration, timing and quality of sleep is essential to good performance, and is probably the best recovery an athlete can employ, but pressure to perform and travel can contribute to poor sleep.

Compounding the problem is the surge of adrenalin that comes with high intensity exercise.

Particularly when playing late at night, players can be left desperate for

sleep after games, often having to front up early the next morning for recovery sessions.

Trouble sleeping is exacerbated if players are taking stimulants such as the caffeine tablets No-Doz.

In moderate doses, caffeine supplementation has been shown to improve endurance, anaerobic exercise performance, skills and concentration.

However players are reported to have taken between four and six tablets before games, and at 100mg of caffeine per tablet, that’s equivalent to five to seven cups of coffee. That’s not moderate use.

With caffeine, more is not better when it comes to enhancing performance. In a literature review on caffeine and sports performance prepared for the AFL Research Board, Professor Louise Burke stated: “The effects of higher doses of caffeine can be negative and include anxiety and loss of fine motor control.”

While not prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), caffeine has been placed on the 2013 WADA Monitoring Program so that potential misuse in-competition can be monitored. Aside from potential side effects of caffeine supplementation including anxiety,

increased blood pressure and headaches, not surprisingly it keeps players awake.

So to bring themselves down after a game, some players use sleeping pills such as Stillnox or Temazepam.

Such sleeping pills are usually prescribed but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are taken as recommended. Ben Cousins was hospitalised in 2010 after overdosing on prescription sleeping pill tablets.

In combination with alcohol, sleeping tablets can result in loss of consciousness, increased anxiety and depression.

In 1967, that combination was the unintentional cause of death of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.

Still, some AFL players run the gauntlet with this potentially lethal combination. In 2011 St Kilda fined players Zac Dawson, Rhys Stanley, Jack Steven and Paul Cahill $5000 and suspended them for six weeks for consuming alcohol and prescribed medication believed to be sleeping pills.

In 2012 Tigers Dustin Martin and Daniel Connors combined alcohol and sleeping tablets and were late to training the following morning.

The use or misuse of sleeping tablets

among athletes is common. Who can forget the infamous Stillnox “bonding session” controversy surrounding members of the Australian 4 x 100m men’s relay team, or Grant Hackett missing out on gold in the men’s 1500m freestyle final at the Beijing Olympics due to his “heavy reliance” on Stillnox?

Performance anxiety is prevalent among athletes, and is one of many causes of poor quality or inadequate sleep before a big game or event.

“Before a game there is a lot of pressure on AFL players that doesn’t get recognised or appreciated by the general public,” explained Darren Burgess, Port Adelaide’s High Performance Manager.

“It’s a pretty intense competition so I think sometimes a pressure to perform well might get to some of the players and that’s one of the reasons why they don’t sleep. After a game, there’s the adrenalin rush of the game as well as the soreness that’s associated with playing the game…if they play at night time it’s often pretty hard to get the players to sleep during the night. That’s generally as a result of adrenalin and replaying the game in your mind makes it a bit tough to sleep.

“Everything from risk of poor

INSIDE FEATURE Dr Jodi Richardson

performance to risk of injury will increase or will be affected by perhaps a few nights in a row where they struggle to sleep. Skill, decision making and physical performance can be affected.”

The effects of reduced sleep amount or quality include longer reaction times, reduced concentration, reduced decision making ability and increased risk of injury. The link between inadequate sleep and reduced performance has been demonstrated repeatedly in the scientific literature.

Pat Byrne, vice president and founder of Fatigue Science, shares some research around sleep and performance that may have you rethinking your bedroom antics.

“Sleep is the holy grail in sport,” said Byrne. “The difference in reaction time between getting six and eight hours sleep is surprising.

“It can easily be up 10-15 per cent depending on the time of day of the game.

“The timing of sleep is important too, if you sleep eight hours in a 24-hour period, performance can be affected if the eight hours of sleep is between 2am and 10am, as opposed to being between 12 midnight and 8am.

“Humans are diurnal animals and are biologically programmed to be awake when it is light out and to sleep when it is dark.

“Sleeping when it is dark is the best and sleep duration is a large part of it, but so is the timing of your sleep.”

Fatigue Science specialises in the measurement and management of fatigue to minimise risk and maximise performance in elite sport and in a broad range of industries including the U. S. military, mining and for many organisations vigilant about monitoring and reducing the fatigue of their employees. Readiband technology and software developed by Fatigue Science are also used by Rio Tinto and by the U.S. Government, where it is implemented to monitor the pilots of the presidential aircraft, Air Force One.

The West Coast Eagles are closely monitoring their players’ sleep using Readibands which are lightweight watches that measure sleep and, more importantly, fatigue.

“The Readiband technology has been scientifically validated by many departments within the US government including the US Army and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” Byrne said.

“Readibands measure wrist movement in three dimensions 16 times a second. The data is analysed by a sophisticated algorithm that is 93 per cent accurate and turns motion data into sleep/wake data.

“More importantly the sleep data is analysed by the SAFTE model software, which turns sleep data into

T SLEEP…

Sleeping pills: Dustin Martin. Overdose: Ben Cousins was a risk-taker.

Sleepy: James Hird may yearn for a good night’s sleep.

Hackett: Knocked out by Stillnox.

perchance to dreamScience is showing that a good night’s sleep is the

most important recovery technique of all.

INSIDE FOOTBALL Wednesday August 14, 2013 25

performance or reaction time data. “The SAFTE software was recently

validated by the United States Federal Aviation Administration that studied 200 flight attendants’ sleep and had them take over 10,000 reaction tests.

“The results showed that the SAFTE model could accurately predict reaction time in the field. For players this means if they know their sleep they can accurately predict how they will perform.”

Byrne explained that their role when implementing their technology within a club was to educate coaching staff so that within the team player performance, recovery and travel arrangements were optimised.

West Coast has adopted this technology.

“In the past, the Eagles would arrange their travel after an interstate game without knowing how the game or the travel affected the players sleep or performance, now with good objective sleep and performance data they can make better decisions,” Byrne said.

“Sometimes staying in the city of their match is the smart decision, sometimes not. Teams tend to focus on the player’s circadian rhythm, which impacts far less on player performance than the sleep lost.

“Changes to circadian rhythm account for around 7-10 per cent slower reaction time, whereas sleep

loss accounts for 30-40 per cent slower reaction time.”

While poor sleep length, quality and timing is very much related to a decline in performance, the opposite is also true. In her research into the effects of sleep extension on athletic performance, Stanford University research scientist Cherie Mah showed that when the number of hours of nightly sleep is increased to a minimum of 10 hours in a group of male basketball players over a period of five to seven weeks, performance improved markedly.

The basketball players demonstrated a faster timed sprint following sleep extension, improved shooting accuracy where free throw percentage increased by 9 per cent, and three-point goal percentage increasing by 9.2 per cent, improved reaction time and players also reported improved physical and mental well-being during practice and games.

Over recent years, recovery has emerged as a speciality in high-performance sport, and is a significant part of an athlete’s training plan.

The head of Performance Recovery at the AIS, Dr Shona Halson, considers the guidelines and education provided for athletes around sleep to be their best recovery strategy.

This sentiment is echoed by Burgess. “Recovery is almost coming back to just sound sleep and nutrition,”

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Burgess said. “There’s a lot been made about ice

baths, aqua recovery and compression and there is good solid science behind it but the two biggest contributors to recovery and your subsequent ability to perform are good sleep and good nutrition.

“The days of training at 8am are hopefully over for most team sports, in order to try and allow players to recover from both training and games.”

Sleep can be monitored directly using actigraphy where an actigraph unit (a type of movement sensor as is used in the Readiband) is worn in a wristwatch on the non-dominant arm, sometimes for weeks. It can also be measured indirectly where subjective ratings of sleep can indicate sleep quality and duration.

Burgess uses a mix of both methods with Port Adelaide.

“We’re in the middle of a six-day break so one night’s sleep is pretty important,” Burgess said.

“If you get one night where a player hasn’t slept too well then you might have a conversation with a player about why that might be. If it’s two or three nights in a row, you might dig a little deeper and ask questions as to why.”

If sleep problems are ongoing, Burgess will refer players to the doctor and possibly the psychologist.

“We don’t encourage the use of sleeping tablets, they can help in the short term but they’re not really getting to the cause of the problem,” Burgess said.

Part of the problem is that people get used to having less sleep. It becomes a new normal, and we adjust to functioning well on fewer hours than we actually need.

“Sleep loss is an insidious problem,” Byrne said. “And one concerning finding in the research is that you have to lose around 30 per cent of your reaction time before you actually sense a feeling of fatigue within yourself.

“This is why players often confuse how they feel with how they can perform. They might feel fine after getting used to a poor sleep pattern but they still perform poorly on objective tests.

“There are three key reasons athletes, and people in general, do not get the sleep they need,” Byrne said.

“One reason is biological, where the person has a sleep disorder such as restless legs. This type of problem needs referral to a specialist.

“The second is where sleep loss

results from travelling interstate, workplace rosters and the like; and lastly, and the reason affecting our sleep that we have most influence on is lifestyle.

“This includes computer use late at night, socialising and even disruption from children.”

A nocturnal habit that Burgess has discussed with Port players is use of tablet computers and iPhones.

A study published in March this year reported that the light emitted from tablets computers can suppress melatonin after prolonged viewing. Melatonin is a hormone important in regulating cycles of sleep.

A range of suggestions can create an optimal lead-in to hitting the hay.

These include avoiding caffeine prior to sleep, avoiding screen time in bed (iPhone, tablet, TV), keeping the bedroom peaceful and dark, and going to bed and rising routinely.

If you don’t get what you need at night, science supports the afternoon power nap. The results of a study by Waterhouse (2007) revealed that following only four hours sleep the previous night, a post-lunch nap improved alertness, sleepiness, short-teprm memory and accuracy at the eight-choice reaction test.

That’s all I need to know, I’m off for a kip!

❚ For more information: www. fatiguescience.com

‘Humans are diurnal animals and are biologically programmed to be awake when it is light out and to sleep when it is dark. ‘

Readiband: Measures fatigue.