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Ivy Lara

Trishia Briones

1302-222

02/01/2023

How does a College Athlete Preform with 8 Hours of Sleep?

Have you ever had your full 8 hours of sleep? Do you feel well rested and ready for the

day? Sleep has an important role in everyone’s life especially in college athletes. Throughout this

experiment, we have tested a subject that is a female college athlete who was instructed to sleep

for eight hours a day for 5 days. She was instructed to journal her progress and her feelings as the

day went on. Most athletes don’t take in the sleep they need to preform at their best and there can

be different variations of sleep patterns that works best for their performance. This test was done

to see if a college athlete could sleep eight hours of sleep and preform at their highest with

classes and everything involved in their life. Here we would like to see how it affects the

emotional and mental response on how it impacts the athlete we are testing and how they feel

overall after the experiment has concluded.

Effects of 8 Hours of Sleep

The first day the athlete went to sleep at 12 PM after a long day of school and training.

She woke up at eight PM and wrote in her journal. She wrote “that with 8 hours of sleep I did not

feel like I got enough sleep and very tired” (Ivy’s Lara Journal Day 1 (2023). According to Sleep

and Athletic Performance article it said, “Sleep duration has fallen in healthy adults since the

mid-twentieth century to approximately 8-9 hours per night” (H. H. K. Fullagar et al. 164). They

say that 8 to 9 hours is healthy for an average adult. The athlete felt as though she couldn’t focus
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on class and was more worried about staying awake than understanding the lecture. She was

feeling really “sleepy” in her words and wanted to take a nap the whole day. The whole day she

summed it up to one word which was “exhausting”. Her mood changed from being happy to just

wanting the day to finish so she could sleep. Throughout the day she would meet up with her

friends and said, “I don’t want to be there and just want to go back to the dorms to relax or take a

nap” Ivy’s Lara Journal Day 1 (2023). The Second day she felt the same but a little better of a

day. She went along her day and only had the problem of sleepiness towards the end of her day.

She wanted to go and sleep by 6 pm of the day which was better than on Monday. She also had

practice that day and said she felt as if she “pulled out energy out of nowhere” Ivy’s Lara Journal

Day 2 (2023), but that it ran out as soon as she was out of training and on to class. In The Journal

of Physiology, it states “One of the proposed functions of sleep is to conserve energy.” (C. M.

Jung et al. 236) This just proves how much sleep is important because without it where would we

pull out the energy to perform.

How does Sleep Impact Athletes

By the third day she was exhausted due to the training they had and the early morning

back-to-back classes she had before training. Sleep is critical to have especially since her day

being long and with no naps in between, the day can really become exhausting. She said it felt

like she slept but didn’t at the same time. She put “I woke up not wanting to go to class but as

soon as I got up, I felt better” Ivy’s Lara Journal Day 3 (2023). This night she had gone to sleep

later but still got the 8 hours of sleep because she had an assignment due the next day in class. In

the article the 8 Hour Challenge they put “One consequence of procrastinating and cramming is

that students may restrict sleep with the intention of studying more” (King et al. 87). This is what
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the athlete did instead of thinking of the time or the sleep she would be getting, she thought

about school first. By the fourth day of getting 8 hours of sleep, she had felt better. As the days

went on, she had said it was getting easier to sleep the eight hours but felt like she could use

more hours of sleep. Most athletes need the minimum of about 10 to 11 hours of sleep. (H. H. K.

Fullagar et al. 164) Its important for them to get sleep and be at their one hundred percent to

preform on and off the field and from what we have seen right now its not going that well. By

the fifth day she was ready to take naps and sleep whenever she felt tired due to the lack of sleep.

The sleep deprivation impacts them by not being focused when they need to, headaches and

being tired when they shouldn’t be. This is a huge problem because athletes need to be in their

top shape and if not, they fall short when they need to perform.

Results of the Experiment

In conclusion to the experiment, the athlete said they did not want to do that again and try

to get the 10 to 11 hours they need to have optimal performance for their game. She was happy

to take naps at the end of the day or after training to regain her energy for the class she had next.

Not having the sleep that the athlete made her very tired mostly for classes. She couldn’t

concentrate and would have trouble comprehending thing when told. Through these 5 days she

experienced continuous headaches and had lack of energy throughout the day. She felt that this

experiment could have been good but for a healthy adult not doing physical exercise every day.

At the end of the day this experiment came out to be bad for the athlete who needed her

rest for the upcoming day. She went through five days with 8 hours of sleep and no naps. She

went throughout her day going to class, training and class again through these 5 days. Normally
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she sleeps about nine to ten hours due to the physical exercise that she does daily. Sometimes

less but it was something that tired her out more than her normal schedule. Overall, this was not

good and didn’t help the female college athlete with her studies or with the sport she was

participating in.
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Works Cited

Fullagar, Hugh H. K., et al. “Sleep and Athletic Performance: The Effects of Sleep Loss on

Exercise Performance, and Physiological and Cognitive Responses to Exercise.” Sports

Medicine (Auckland), vol. 45, no. 2, 2015, pp. 161–86, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-

014-0260-0.

Ivy’s Lara Journal Day 1-5 (2023)

Jung, Christopher M., et al. “Energy Expenditure During Sleep, Sleep Deprivation and Sleep

Following Sleep Deprivation in Adult Humans.” The Journal of Physiology, vol. 589, no.

1, 2011, pp. 235–44, https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.2010.197517.

King, Elise, et al. “The 8‐Hour Challenge: Incentivizing Sleep During End‐of‐Term

Assessments.” Journal of Interior Design, vol. 44, no. 2, 2019, pp. 85–99,

https://doi.org/10.1111/joid.12135.

Vlahoyiannis, Angelos, et al. “Deconstructing Athletes’ Sleep: A Systematic Review of the

Influence of Age, Sex, Athletic Expertise, Sport Type, and Season on Sleep

Characteristics.” Journal of Sport and Health Science, vol. 10, no. 4, 2021, pp. 387–402,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2020.03.006.