Research summary · Women in sport
Longer pre-race sleep is associated with faster swimming in a small collegiate sample
Eleven collegiate female swimmers contributed wearable sleep data from the night before 200-yard freestyle races, with at least 21 valid monitoring nights in the preceding 28 days. Researchers related sleep and overnight cardiovascular measures to recorded competition times.
- Publication year
- 2026
- First published online
- Publication type
- Observational study with Bayesian mixed-effects analysis
- Journal
- Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research
- Population / context
- Women's swimming · 200-yard freestyle
What the publication reports
Bayesian models supported an association between longer sleep duration or time in bed and faster racing. Sleep efficiency, resting heart rate and heart-rate variability showed little evidence of meaningful performance associations in this sample.
Limits and interpretation
Only 11 athletes were studied, and sleep was observed rather than experimentally extended. Training, competition context and other factors may confound the relationships. Wearable estimates are imperfect, and the analysis cannot guarantee a particular time improvement from an extra hour of sleep.
Read the source
Consult the original record for the full author list, methods, references, funding and competing-interest disclosures.
Relationship Between Objective Measures of Sleep and Nocturnal Cardiovascular Physiology and Swimming Performance in Collegiate Female Athletes: A Bayesian Analysis
Original publication / indexed recordPMID: 42911853DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000005630Reader discussion
Discuss the evidence.
Ask a question, share a source or discuss the methods. Respectful disagreement is welcome. Every comment and reply is reviewed before publication.
Loading comments…