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Circadian factors in workforce performance

An article published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews takes a comprehensive look at the science behind workplace fatigue. In the article, “Fatigue and its Management in the Workplace,” the authors look at the biological causes of fatigue, how the modern workplace affects these biological factors, and some of the effective ways to manage fatigue.

Sleep and nutrition highlight Seattle Sounders Sports Science Weekend

With the MLS season in full swing, the NHL Stanley Cup Final and NBA Final underway, and #Euro2016 set to kick off, timing couldn’t be more perfect for the fifth annual Seattle Sounders Sports Science Weekend. On June 9-11, 2016 the brightest minds and most accomplished innovators in sports will convene in the Emerald City to share their latest performance insights.

Once again, Fatigue Science will be in the mix at the Sounders Sports Science Weekend, this time along with our friend Dr. Brandon Marcello. Marcello will take centre stage to educate all on the unbreakable bond between sleep and nutrition for high performance athletes.

“Nutrition can make a good athlete great, or a great athlete good,” says Marcello, who has implemented successful high-performance training programs for professional, Olympic and collegiate athletes. “When built upon proper sleep habits, these two components can provide both an optimal training response, and improved performance.”

Marcello’s nutrition presentation highlights Day 2 (Friday, June 10, 12-12:45 PST) of the packed sports performance program, which also features the latest methodologies in training, strength & conditioning, performance coaching, and data analytics. This session on the symbiotic relationship between sleep and nutrition will be of great interest to pro, college, club, or high school coaches working at the highest level of any team sport.

“Within this talk,” adds Marcello. “I will discuss the foundational components of high-performance nutrition, and go into depth regarding supplements, nutrient timing, meal composition, nutritional myths, and methods of educating the athlete.”

Learn more about the importance of sleep and nutrition in performance sports.

Interested in learning more about data-driven fatigue management?

or for a comprehensive overview of the scientific link between sleep and athletic performance, download our free Science of Sleep eBook.

Podcast: ‘Sleep In and Win’ performance in sport with Ian Dunican

Our friend and collaborator Ian Dunican (@Sleep4Perform) recently spoke with SleepHub about using sleep to help elite athletes reach peak performance. Dunican talks in detail about using Fatigue Science’s Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool (FAST) to help Super Rugby teams plan for and manage fatigue. He believes this has the potential to translate into greater success on the field of play.

“There’s definitely a relationship between how much sleep these athletes are getting and how they perform,” Dunican tells Dr. David Cunnington. “The recovery period, in particular, is really, really interesting.”

Dunican points out that he’s working with Super Rugby team the Perth Western Force, one of sports most traveled teams, to find ways to improve performance and recovery by measuring and optimizing sleep.

“It’s really interesting during Super Rugby competition because (Western Force) may have games back-to-back or they may have to travel from Perth to South Africa and back to Perth to New Zealand, and now with Japan as well,” says Dunican. “So the recovery is a vital piece of the overall performance of the team. And more time in the gym and more time on the field during the week is not necessarily translating into better performance in the game in that win/loss metric. So given the ample opportunity for sleep, recovery during those times is really key.”

Dunican adds that without actively facilitating key rest periods during those difficult portions of the schedule, athletes are not going to be able to recover mentally or physically. That’s because the lack of sleep stunts the body’s ability to naturally produce testosterone or human growth hormone, for example, which athletes require to recover from the rigours of their particular sport. According to Dunican, however, new technology is playing a key role in pushing performance.

“We’ve been using a lot of bio mathematical modelling,” says Dunican. “We’re using FAST from Fatigue Science in Vancouver, Canada. We’ve been using that to model last season, where we take the training times, the game times, a sample of actigraphy data and put that into FAST.”

With help from Fatigue Science technology Dunican is able to extrapolate out to an effectiveness measure to show the team’s players and coaches.


“Using those measures we’ve been able to model various countermeasures for next season such as changing flights, training times, increases in sleep, manipulations in sleep environment and so on,” says Dunican. “And we’re able to demonstrate from a modelling perspective what these changes might bring about. So next season we’ll be actually deploying those measures with the coach and the performance coach and then hopefully climbing the ladder to show that sleep can actually help you win.”

Ian Dunican (@Sleep4Perform)  has 18 year’s international experience as a leader in project management, business improvement and health, safety, within the mining industry and military. He’s currently undertaking PhD research at University of Western Australia (UWA) and Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) investigating, among other things, the impact of evening use of electronic devices on sleep and next day athletic performance, the effects of jet lag and transmeridian travel on athletic performance, and the prevalence of sleeping disorders amongst professional Rugby players.

Interested in learning more about data-driven fatigue management?

or for a comprehensive overview of the scientific link between sleep and athletic performance, download our free Science of Sleep eBook.

Sleep like a champ: How FSU women’s soccer promotes sleep as a vital component of success

The Florida State University Seminoles have one of the top women’s soccer programs in the United States. FSU has qualified for the NCAA tournament every year since 2000, making appearances in three championship games over that stretch.

The Seminoles women’s soccer team has been using the Fatigue Science Readiband technology since 2014. As the team prepares to kick off the 2015 season as defending National Champions, we had the chance to ask a few questions of Assistant Coach Mike Bristol about their use of the Fatigue Science Readiband platform.

Assistant Coach Mike Bristol Photo courtesy of seminoles.com

Assistant Coach Mike Bristol photo courtesy of seminoles.com

Since his arrival in Tallahassee, Bristol has helped guide the Seminoles to four straight appearances in the College Cup, a national runner-up finish in 2013 and the national title in 2014. Last December, Mike was honored as the Glenn “Mooch” Myernick National Women’s Assistant Coach of the Year.

“The technology helps in their understanding of how fatigue affects performance, both on the field and in the classroom.”

— Assistant Coach Mike Bristol

A few questions with FSU Women’s Soccer’s Mike Bristol

F/S: How do the Seminoles incorporate modern technology into the overall team program?

MB: All of the technology we use is geared towards avoidance of injury and player education. That is, we really try to reduce the impact of fatigue-associated injury and keep the players feeling fresh and healthy late into the season. We also want to prepare them for their future as professionals after their time at FSU. With the condensed nature of the collegiate soccer season amid a demanding academic schedule, recovery from training and games is imperative for optimal performance. The technology helps in their understanding of how fatigue affects performance, both on the field and in the classroom.

 

F/S: How are you using the Readiband technology?

MB: Currently, the Readibands are being used for player education and health screening, learning how athletes manage sleep around games/events, and making decisions to limit the impact of training and travel on sleep opportunity. We are looking forward to evaluating game-time readiness with the implementation of Bluetooth capabilities in the new model.

 

F/S: What have you found to be the biggest benefit?

MB: Player education is of great importance to us here at Florida State. The Readibands have encouraged our athletes to learn about their sleep habits and how it affects their performance on the soccer field. Another benefit we have seen is the ability to screen for possible sleep disturbances, and get to the root of the problem before it becomes a serious issue.

 

F/S: To what degree has using the Readibands been a game-changer for your athletes and the team overall?

MB: The Readiband and all of this education about sleep and recovery has been immensely helpful in preparing our athletes for training and competition. It definitely plays a part in the overall picture we try to give our athletes about the importance of preparation and recovery during a short and busy season.   The small details make a big difference at the end of the season.

 

F/S: Finish this sentence: Sleep is…

MB: One of the vital components to optimal performance.

 

We look forward to seeing what the season brings for defending national champions, the FSU Seminoles!

ESPN Magazine: Athlete monitoring in the NBA

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In a league where teams often play back-to-back nights in different cities requiring late, post-game travel, sufficient sleep is hard to come by and fatigue, in due time, can take its toll.

Accordingly, last season the tech-savvy Dallas Mavericks became the first NBA team to partner with Fatigue Science, followed by the Brooklyn Nets, with additional teams joining for the upcoming 2014-2015 season. Using the Readiband system, the Mavs monitor players’ sleep and fatigue to help ensure they are ready come game time.

The Mavericks’ training staff recently spoke with ESPN regarding the team’s use of technology to monitor its players.

“If you told an athlete you had a treatment that would reduce the chemicals associated with stress, that would naturally increase human growth hormone, that enhances recovery rate, that improves performance, they would all do it. Sleep does all of those things,” said Mavericks’ Head Athletic Trainer, Casey Smith.

This is exactly what Stanford School of Medicine researcher, Cheri Mah, demonstrated in 2011 study on the impacts of sleep extension to athletic performance. The study, published in the journal of Sleep, examined 11 varsity men’s basketball team players and found that increasing sleep to 10 hours a night decreased injury risk and improved players’ reaction time, sprint times, and free-throw percentage.

“Once guys get a feeling for performing at a higher level,” says Jeremy Holsopple, the team’s Athletic Performance Director, “it’s a big difference from feeling like s—. Which they didn’t even think was feeling like s—.”

Holsopple says that “teams lose 10 to 15 games a year because players aren’t even remotely close to physical and mental freshness,” which undoubtedly is something the Mavericks want to mitigate this season.

Read the full article here, or pick up October 27’s copy of ESPN The Magazine NBA Preview Issue.

BetaKit: Don’t be the drunken entrepreneur

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BetaKit writer, John Gray, spent some time with Fatigue Science CEO, Sean Kerklaan, to discuss Fatigue Science’s technology, the CEO life, and how the science behind sleep and performance matters to industrial workers, professional elite athletes, and start-up CEO’s alike.

John writes: “This science is all about optimizing performance. They are working with clients including professional sports teams like the Vancouver Canucks, the Dallas Mavericks (NBA), Seattle Sounders (MLS), and a soon to be announced NFL team. The correlation between performance and the bottom line is obvious for both the franchise and the athletes. Entrepreneurs need to be giving themselves the star sleep treatment too.”

Read more at BetaKit.com