Individualized sleep education improves subjective and objective sleep indices in elite cricket athletes: A pilot study

ABSTRACT

The aim of the current study was to evaluate the effect of personalized sleep hygiene education on sleep indices in elite athletes. Nine elite male cricket players performed 3 weeks of baseline sleep monitoring (PRE), followed by group and individualized sleep hygiene education and a further 3 weeks of sleep monitoring (POST). Subjective sleep questionnaires included the Athlete Sleep Behaviour Questionnaire (ASBQ), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Objective sleep indices were monitored via wrist actigraphy. There were significant improvements (p < 0.05) in two of the sleep questionnaires (ESS and PSQI) and in sleep efficiency (+5%), sleep latency (−29 min) and sleep onset variance (−28 min) following the intervention, all associated with large or very large effect sizes (d= 1.38, −0.85 and −0.88, respectively). The current study reports that personalized sleep hygiene education using the ASBQ to target maladaptive sleep behaviours may be effective in acutely improving sleep indices in elite male athletes.

KEYWORDS:

• Sleep hygiene
• recovery
• actigraphy
• athlete sleep behaviour questionnaire (ASBQ)

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank New Zealand Cricket and the athletes for taking part in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.