Putting in more hours in the pool, on the bike, or on the run may not be the best way to that personnel best time at your next race after all.
A new study suggests that more sleep may be the best strategy to get more speed.
According to the New York Times the small study included five members of the Stanford women’s tennis team:
"After increasing sleep, the athletes performed better on all the drills. Sprinting drill times dropped on average to 17.56 seconds from 19.12 seconds.
Hitting accuracy, measured by valid serves, improved to 15.61 serves, up from 12.6 serves, and a hitting depth drill improved to 15.45 hits, up from 10.85 hits."
Mark Remy of Runner's World suggests that, "We runners obsess over speed work, long runs, tempo runs, hill runs, lactate threshold, resting heart rate, carbs, protein, recovery drinks, stretching, massage, ice baths, shoes, technical fabrics, gels, and about a hundred other variables. But most of us, I bet, don’t give sleep a second thought. It’s crazy, if you think about it. How can we expect to run well if we can’t stop yawning? "
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