Under the category of it all “depends on the individual”, comes the answer to the question of how much sleep do we need each night.
Obviously, the answer for adults is MUCH different than it is for young athletes.
As an example, I feel very comfortable functioning off 4-5 hours of sleep per night (even though most experts bang the point home that adults should be aiming for 8 hours of sleep each night).
For young athletes, sleep is extraordinarily crucial!
The National Sleep Foundation suggests that active adolescent athletes receive 8-10 hours of sleep per night.
The guidelines for athletes ages 6-12 are even higher, with the recommended amount of sleep being 9-11 hours.
Daily sleep needs may vary in accordance with the toll that the body has gone through on any given day.
Sleep is critical for the body to “repair” itself.
Well-rested athletes are also in a better position for the higher cognitive-leaning tasks such as making split-second decisions and overall focus which can have a reverberating effect on their entire team if something incorrectly is done on the mat and can trace itself back to lack of sleep in one capacity or another.
If an athlete is not getting proper sleep, this can potentially influence how successful their next practice or competition turns out.
There are a number of studies circling around with definitive suggestions that athletes, in general, get less sleep than non-athletes.
A recent cross-sectional study of 1016 adolescents, however, contradicts this opinion in that the best athletes in the study had gotten more sleep than non-athletes (8.5 hours vs. 7.7 hours during the week; 9.8 hours vs. 9.3 hours on the weekend).
The authors of the study believe that the higher average amount of sleep in the high performing athletes was related to the higher training loads that they put their body through and hence their body demanding of them the extra rest in order to properly recuperate.
Extra rest that the non-athletes being observed clearly would not need.
Not only is better quality sleep hyper essential to overall athletic performance, but in a recent article, Dr. Michael Breus points out that it also leads to fewer injuries and better overall health.
This includes mental health.
It is easy to recognize the super high increase in the amount of anxiety and depression being experienced by our young athletes over the last few years since the beginning of the recent pandemic, sleep has never been as significant as it is today as a way to combat these debilitating issues.
With sleep deprivation leading to depleted reaction times, higher levels of stress and anxiety, lower overall mental performance, energy levels not being where they should be, and the risk of injury being elevated, the critical nature of ensuring that young athletes achieve the proper amount of sleep they need is not only super important on a day in and day out basis, but for their overall athletic and physical development as well.
