Context:
Overreaching can be beneficial, but there is a risk of overtraining.
Objective:
To investigate the difference in sleep efficiency between overreached and nonover-reached swimmers.
Design:
Repeated-measures, between-subjects. Swimmers were determined to be overreaching if 2 or more of their consecutive weekly swim times increased by 5% or more from baseline.
Participants:
9 competitive high school and university sprinter swimmers.
Intervention:
24-h wrist actigraph.
Main Outcome Measure:
Sleep efficiency as measured by the actigraph.
Results:
There was a significant difference in sleep efficiency on night 1 between the overreached and nonoverreached swimmers (P = .008), as well as in their times after averaging over all 5 trials and adjusting for baseline (P = .016). By the fourth swim trial, the overreached swimmers had significantly slower swim times than those of the nonoverreached swimmers (P = .001).
Conclusions:
Sleep efficiency shows potential as an objective, noninvasive predictor and monitor of overreaching in swimmers.
