Tag: recovery

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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It’s more or less an annual ritual: Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory releases some results that show how getting more sleep improves performance in Stanford varsity athletes. I’ve written before about her results for tennis players and swimmers. This year’s data, published in the journal Sleep, focused on basketball players, who were asked to aim to increase their time in bed to 10 hours a night:

Participants shot 10 free throws from 15 feet, making an average of 7.9 shots at baseline and 8.8 shots at the end of the sleep extension period. They also attempted 15 three-point field goals, making an average of 10.2 shots at baseline and 11.6 shots after sleep extension. The timed sprint [which improved from 16.2 to 15.5 seconds] involved running from  baseline to half-court and back to baseline, then the full 94-foot length of the court and back to baseline.

None of these sleep studies were randomized or controlled, so we can’t take the data too seriously. (Particularly in sports like swimming, we’d expect to see improvements from early season to late season even without a change in sleeping habits.) Still, it’s interesting stuff.

What differentiates the basketball data from some of the earlier studies is that sleep time was measured objectively using actigraphs (basically watched-sized devices that monitor movement at night). So we know that the basketball players managed to increase their actual time asleep (as opposed to just time in bed) for just under 8.5 hours a  night, an increase of110.9 minutes from baseline. That’s a big difference — and it’s a lot of sleep, considerably more than most people even aim for.

Mah offers these tips:

• Prioritize sleep as a part of your regular training regimen.
• Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.
• Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to nine hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).
• Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.
• Take brief 20-30 minute naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy.

This is all eat-your-vegetables kind of advice. I mean, we all know sleep is important — but sometimes it’s good to be reminded that the results show up objectively.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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A quick post with a couple of links for those interested in reading more about the Taubes/Lustig “toxic sugar” debate. To hear more from Taubes, check out his answers to numerous reader questions at the NYT site. And to read David Katz’s response to Taubes/Lustig (hat tip to Yoni Freedhoff at Weighty Matters), click here. A peek at Katz’s conclusion:

As dietary guidance, the vilification of one nutrient at a time has proven as flighty as hummingbirds, propelling us from one version of humbug to another. My advice is to grasp firmly your common sense, and stay grounded.

The hummingbird stuff makes more sense if you read the whole post, but it’s generally a Pollan-esque argument rather than a research-y one. Still, it’s about where I come down. Taubes’s response to that point:

This is a common argument over the years, that reductionism in nutrition research misses the point. Michael Pollan makes this argument in “In Defense of Food.” The counter argument is that this is, indeed, a science and one way sciences make progress is by reducing problems down to their basics. This can often be misleading, and Suzanne’s point (as with Michael Pollan’s) that it has been in the past is very true.

I’ve been a strong journalistic opponent of the belief that salt causes hypertension or that dietary fat or saturated fat causes disease and in doing so I’ve attacked the bad science behind some of these reductionist arguments. But just because over the years one single nutrient after another has been singled out as harmful doesn’t mean that one single nutrient isn’t harmful. It only means that the research is poor and some of the beliefs about how research should be done in these fields are also misconceived.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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Training on “empty” — i.e. with low carbohydrate stores — is one of the hot topics in sports nutrition these days. (I’ve posted on it a few times, for example here and here.) Louise Burke of the Australian Institute of Sport has a good summary of the current thinking in the ACSM’s Sports Medicine Bulletin.

Traditionally, athletes have approached their daily workouts to train as hard as possible, using strategies that promote good performance, just as they would in a race or match. In many sports, these strategies involve fueling up with carbohydrates before, during and between workouts to sustain the capacity to produce power. Recently, however, scientists have proposed an alternative approach…

I won’t bother trying to summarize the whole thing, because Burke is already compressing a lot of information into a small space — if you’re interested in the topic, it’s worth a read. A couple of minor points to highlight, though:

While some publicity surrounding this study suggests otherwise, the outcomes from [training low] weren’t achieved by following a low carbohydrate diet.

This is about having low carb stores for a short period of time, for instance by depleting carbs with a prior workout, not being in a chronically low-carb state. And a very interesting point:

It makes sense that sessions completed at lower intensity or at the beginning of a training cycle are best suited for, or perhaps least disadvantaged by, [train low] strategies. Conversely, quality sessions done at higher intensities or in the transition to peaking for competition might best be undertaken with better fuel support.

In other words, nutrition should be periodized. What you eat — and how you think about the relationship between your food and your performance — should be different in base phase than it is come competition time.