Poor precompetitive sleep habits, nutrients’ deficiencies, inappropriate body composition and athletic performance in elite gymnasts

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate body composition, sleep, precompetitive anxiety and dietary intake on the elite female gymnasts’ performance prior to an international competition. Sixty-seven rhythmic gymnasts of high performance level were evaluated in relation to sport and training practice, body composition, sleep duration, daytime sleepiness by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), sleep quality by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), precompetitive anxiety by the Sport Competition Anxiety Test form A (SCAT-A) and detailed dietary intake just before an international competition. Most gymnasts (67.2%) suffered from mild daytime sleepiness, 77.6% presented poor sleep quality and 19.4% presented high levels of precompetitive anxiety. The majority of gymnasts reported low energy availability (EA) and low intakes of important vitamins including folate, vitamins D, E and K; and minerals, including calcium, iron, boron and magnesium (p < .05). Gymnasts’ performance was positively correlated with age (p = .001), sport practice (p = .024), number of daily training hours (p = .000), number of hours of training/week (p = .000), waist circumference (WC) (p = .008) and sleep duration (p = .005). However, it was negatively correlated with WC/hip circumference (p = .000), ESS (p = .000), PSQI (p = .042), SCAT-A (p = .002), protein g/kg (p = .028), EA (p = .002) and exercise energy expenditure (p = .000). High performance gymnasts presented poor sleep habits with consequences upon daytime sleepiness, sleep quality and low energy availability.

Keywords:

• Sleep duration
• sleep quality
• daytime sleepiness
• energy intake
• elite gymnasts

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Medical Faculty of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal. This research did not receive any specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-profit sector. Both authors were responsible for the conception, design, data analysis and data interpretation of the study and writing the manuscript; M.-R. G. Silva was also responsible for data collection. Authors would like to thank the gymnasts for their participation in this study and the coaches for their cooperation. The authors are also grateful to the editor and reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.