Sleep for Athletes: How Much You Need and How to Get More

If a supplement could make you faster, lower your injury risk, help you fight off colds, sharpen your reactions and improve your mood, every athlete would take it. It exists. It's called sleep, and most active people don't get enough of it.

Training gets the attention, but adaptation happens during recovery, and sleep is the biggest part of recovery. It's when your body releases most of its growth hormone, repairs tissue, restores energy stores and consolidates the skills you practised during the day.

This guide covers how much sleep athletes actually need, what the research says about sleep, performance, injury and illness, and practical ways to sleep better around training, travel and competition.

How much sleep do athletes need?

For adults in general, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society recommend at least seven hours a night on a regular basis. Their 2015 consensus statement, led by Nathaniel Watson, found that regularly sleeping less than that is linked to weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, impaired immune function and more errors and accidents.

Athletes may need more than the minimum. Hard training increases the demand for recovery. A 2021 expert consensus on sleep and athletes, led by Neil Walsh and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, highlighted that athletes often get less sleep than they need and recommended that sleep be treated as a core part of training and recovery.

And many athletes don't hit even the minimum. A 2015 study by Michele Lastella and colleagues tracked elite Australian athletes and found that they averaged under seven hours of sleep a night, with athletes in individual sports sleeping less than those in team sports. Early-morning training sessions were a big reason.

Sleep and performance

The most famous study in this area comes from Cheri Mah and colleagues at Stanford. In 2011, they asked college basketball players to extend their sleep, aiming for 10 hours in bed each night, for five to seven weeks. Compared with their normal routine, the players:

• Ran a timed sprint faster.
• Improved free-throw and three-point shooting accuracy by around 9%.
• Reported better physical and mental wellbeing during practices and games.
• Had faster reaction times.

It was a small study without a control group, so it can't prove sleep alone caused every change. But it fits with a wider body of research showing that sleep loss hurts reaction time, decision-making, accuracy, endurance and mood, and that getting more sleep tends to help.

Even modest sleep loss matters. Restricting sleep for several nights in a row tends to reduce performance in skill-based tasks and makes the same exercise feel harder, even when physical capacity is mostly unchanged.

Sleep and injury risk

In 2014, Matthew Milewski and colleagues studied adolescent athletes at a US school over a season. Those who slept less than eight hours a night were 1.7 times more likely to be injured than those who slept eight hours or more. Hours of sleep was one of the strongest predictors of injury in their analysis, alongside the athletes' school year.

Other studies in adult athletes have found similar links, though not all agree on the size of the effect. The likely reasons include slower reactions, poorer concentration and coordination, and reduced tissue recovery when sleep is short.

If you're managing an injury, sleep matters even more. Our guides to shin splints and runner's knee both rely on your body adapting to gradually increasing load, and that adaptation needs recovery.

Sleep and illness

Short sleep weakens immune defences. In a 2015 study by Aric Prather and colleagues, healthy adults were exposed to a cold virus after their normal sleep had been measured. Those who slept less than six hours a night in the week before were about four times more likely to develop a cold than those who slept more than seven hours.

For athletes, illness means missed training and lost fitness. Heavy training already puts the immune system under some stress, so sleep is one of the easiest ways to protect it.

Why athletes sleep badly

• Early training: 5 or 6 am sessions cut sleep short unless bedtime moves earlier too.
• Late training and competition: evening sessions can leave you wired, hot and hungry at bedtime.
• Caffeine: often used to fuel training, it can stay in your system for many hours.
• Screens and phones: late-night scrolling delays sleep and keeps your brain alert.
• Travel: unfamiliar beds, noisy hotels and time-zone changes.
• Pre-competition nerves: racing thoughts the night before a big event.
• Heavy training blocks: very high training loads can disturb sleep, especially if you're under-eating.

How to sleep better: practical steps

1. Keep a regular schedule

Going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time every day, including weekends, is one of the most effective things you can do. It keeps your body clock steady, which makes falling asleep easier.

2. Work backwards from training

If you train at 6 am and need to be up at 5:15, aim to be asleep by around 9:30 to 10 pm to get seven to eight hours. That means starting to wind down before 9 pm. If that isn't realistic, consider moving some sessions later in the day.

3. Set up your bedroom

• Cool: a slightly cool room helps your body temperature drop, which is part of falling asleep.
• Dark: blackout curtains or an eye mask.
• Quiet: earplugs or a fan for background noise if needed.
• Comfortable: a mattress and pillow you sleep well on.

4. Build a wind-down routine

Give yourself 30 to 60 minutes before bed to slow down. Dim the lights, put your phone away or at least on night mode, and do something relaxing: reading, a shower, stretching, slow breathing. Doing the same things in the same order helps your brain recognise it's time to sleep.

5. Manage caffeine

Caffeine can stay active for many hours. Many people sleep better if they avoid it after early afternoon. If you use caffeine before evening training or competition, notice whether it affects your sleep and adjust the dose or timing.

6. Eat and drink sensibly in the evening

Going to bed very hungry or very full can disturb sleep. After evening training, have a proper meal with carbohydrate and protein. Avoid large amounts of alcohol, which might make you drowsy but reduces sleep quality later in the night.

7. Get daylight in the morning

Morning light helps set your body clock, which makes it easier to feel sleepy at night. A walk or outdoor warm-up in the morning is ideal.

Naps for athletes

Naps can be a useful tool, especially for athletes who train early or twice a day, or after a poor night's sleep.

• Short naps (20 to 30 minutes): improve alertness without leaving you groggy.
• Longer naps (around 90 minutes): allow a full sleep cycle. Useful if you're very short of sleep, but can leave you groggy on waking and may affect night-time sleep.
• Timing: early afternoon is best. Late-afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night.

Naps should add to night-time sleep, not replace it.

Sleep before competition

Many athletes sleep badly the night before a big event. Nerves, unfamiliar surroundings and early starts all play a part. The good news is that a single poor night usually has little effect on performance, especially for shorter events. Adrenaline on the day goes a long way.

What matters more is the sleep you get in the days before. Try to:

• Bank sleep: aim for extra sleep in the week leading up to a big event.
• Keep routines familiar: same wind-down, same pre-race dinner, same bedtime as far as possible.
• Prepare early: pack your kit and plan logistics during the day, so you're not doing it late at night.
• Accept nerves: lying awake worrying about lying awake makes it worse. Remind yourself that one bad night won't ruin your race.

Our guide to pre-game nerves covers techniques such as writing down worries and slow breathing, which can help with pre-competition sleep too.

Travel and jet lag

Crossing time zones disrupts your body clock. A few strategies help:

• Start shifting your sleep schedule towards the new time zone a few days before travelling.
• Seek daylight at the right times in the new location. Morning light helps after travelling east; evening light helps after travelling west.
• Stay hydrated and limit alcohol and caffeine during travel.
• Arrive early before important competitions where possible. A rough guide is one day for each time zone crossed.
• Melatonin may help some people adjust after long-haul flights. Talk to a doctor before using it.

Signs you're not getting enough sleep

• Needing an alarm every day and struggling to get up.
• Sleeping much longer at weekends than on weekdays.
• Feeling drowsy during the day, especially in the early afternoon.
• Relying heavily on caffeine to get through the day or through training.
• Easy sessions feeling harder than usual, with no other explanation.
• Getting ill more often, or irritability and low mood.

If several of these sound familiar, more sleep is likely to help your training more than any change to your programme.

Sleep and food

What and when you eat can affect sleep, and sleep affects what you eat.

• Short sleep increases appetite, particularly for high-energy foods. Poor sleep makes healthy eating harder.
• Eat enough on training days. Going to bed under-fuelled after hard training can disturb sleep.
• A carbohydrate-containing evening meal may help some people fall asleep, and it also supports recovery.
• A protein-rich snack before bed, such as Greek yoghurt or milk, supports overnight muscle repair without disturbing sleep for most people.
• Limit alcohol. It can make you drowsy but tends to fragment sleep later in the night.

Sleep for teenage athletes

Teenagers need more sleep than adults, generally 8 to 10 hours, and their body clocks shift later during adolescence. That makes early school starts and early training sessions particularly hard. Young athletes often juggle school, training, homework and social lives, and sleep is usually what gets squeezed.

Parents and coaches can help by:

• Avoiding very early training sessions where possible.
• Encouraging phones and screens out of the bedroom at night.
• Keeping a consistent weekly schedule.
• Treating sleep as part of training, not something extra.

Given the link between short sleep and injury in young athletes, protecting sleep is one of the most practical injury-prevention steps available.

Sleep for early risers and shift workers

If your job or training means getting up very early, protect your total sleep by going to bed earlier, using blackout curtains if it's still light, and keeping your schedule consistent on rest days too. Shift workers face extra challenges. Where possible, keep a consistent pattern across several shifts, use naps strategically before night shifts, and avoid bright light on the way home if you need to sleep during the day.

Do sleep trackers help?

Wearable sleep trackers are fairly good at estimating total sleep time but much less accurate at identifying sleep stages. They can be useful for spotting trends over weeks and for keeping you accountable to a regular bedtime.

Don't let the numbers take over, though. Some people become anxious about their sleep scores, which can make sleep worse. How you feel during the day is still a good guide.

A simple one-week sleep plan

1. Days 1 to 2: note what time you go to bed, fall asleep and wake up. Work out your average sleep time.
2. Days 3 to 4: set a fixed wake-up time and a bedtime that gives you at least 7.5 hours in bed.
3. Day 5: add a 30-minute wind-down routine and move your phone out of reach.
4. Day 6: cut caffeine after 2 pm.
5. Day 7: check how you feel, how training went and whether your average sleep has gone up.

The bottom line

Sleep is the most underrated part of training. Getting enough of it helps performance, reduces injury and illness and makes everything else in your training work better. Most athletes would gain more from an extra 30 to 60 minutes of sleep a night than from any supplement on the market.

Treat it like a training session: plan it, protect it and give it the same priority as your hardest workout of the week.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

1. Milewski MD, et al. Chronic lack of sleep is associated with increased sports injuries in adolescent athletes. Journal of Pediatric Orthopedics, 2014;34(2):129-33. DOI PubMed
2. Mah CD, et al. The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 2011;34(7):943-50. DOI PubMed
3. Walsh NP, et al. Sleep and the athlete: narrative review and 2021 expert consensus recommendations. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2021;55(7):356-368. DOI PubMed
4. Watson NF, et al. Joint Consensus Statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society on the Recommended Amount of Sleep for a Healthy Adult: Methodology and Discussion. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine : JCSM : Official Publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2015;11(8):931-52. DOI PubMed
5. Prather AA, et al. Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold. Sleep, 2015;38(9):1353-9. DOI PubMed
6. Lastella M, et al. Sleep/wake behaviours of elite athletes from individual and team sports. European Journal of Sport Science, 2015;15(2):94-100. DOI PubMed