Sprint and jump performances of female athletes are enhanced in the evening but not associated with individual chronotype

ABSTRACT

Sprint and jump performances represent performance-determining parameters in individual and team sports. Fluctuations in performance depending on the daytime raise the question of the best time to train and compete. Given the scarce research on females, this study aimed to analyze the influence of daytime on sprint and jump performances and to investigate whether the performance difference is related to the chronotype. Thus, 23 female sports students completed a questionnaire to assess their chronotype followed by performing two 30 m sprints, 5 Repeated Jump Tests (5RJT), and countermovement jumps (CMJ) in the morning (7:00–9:00 h) and evening (17:00–19:00 h). Time after 5 m, 10 m, and 30 m during the sprints, reactive strength index (RSI) during the 5RJTs, and jump height during the CMJs were examined. The performance during the 30 m sprint (t(22) = 5.28, p < 0.01 moderate effect size: 0.50) and the two jump tests (5RJT: t(22) = 8.27, p < 0.01 large effect size: 0.95; CMJ: t(22) = 5.46, p < 0.01 moderate effect size: 0.79) were significantly better in the evening than in the morning. There was no significant correlation between chronotype and the time-of-day effect. The results should be considered when planning training and competition.

KEYWORDS:

• Time-of-day effect
• diurnal variation
• chronotyp
• anaerobic exercise
• Morningness-Eveningness-Questionnaire by Horne and Östberg

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the participants for their enthusiastic participation and the students for their support during data collection. We acknowledge support by the KIT-Publication Fund of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

All raw data can be taken from the supplemental online material at: https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2023.2267659.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/07420528.2023.2267659.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.