Runners With Common Sleep Pattern '68% More Likely' To Get Injured

You might already know that running injuries rise in winter, partly because our muscles are tenser in chillier climes. Slippery surfaces and decreased visibility don’t help, either. But according to new research published in Applied Sciences, it seems our sleep might have an outsized impact on our rate of injury, too.After analysing and comparing the sleep patterns and injury rates of 425 runners, they found that one group were 68% more likely to develop post-jog issues than the rest. “Poor sleepers” had the worst outcomes This study placed runners into four groups: “poor”, “steady,” “efficient,” and “fragmented” profiles. They found that “Runners classified as poor sleepers were significantly more likely to report sports injuries than steady sleepers... with 68% injury probability”.Though the paper didn’t share exactly what the qualifiers were for each section, it says that sleep quality was assessed by looking at sleep duration, sleep quality, and sleep problems.Questions that the participants answered included “Do you have problems falling asleep?”, “Do you wake up during the night?”, “Do you usually wake up feeling tired and not well-rested?”, and “How do you rate the quality of your sleep?”.The injury question, meanwhile, simply asked whether participants had faced any injuries directly due to their running in the past year.The questionnaire provided described this as “an injury, impairment or wound, whether or not associated with pain, caused by or developed during a run training, that causes a restriction on running (in terms of frequency, speed, duration, distance, or intensity) or stoppage of running for at least seven days or three consecutive scheduled training sessions”. These answers were compared to find the 68% figure. “In summary, sleep should be recognised not only as a recovery tool, but also as a potential predictor of injury vulnerability in recreational sports,” the researchers concluded.So... how many hours’ sleep do I need to decrease my risk of injury?This study didn’t seek to find that out, and it didn’t prove poor sleep definitely caused the rise in injury risk either – it just found an association. Still, previous research has found that getting less than seven hours of quality sleep over multiple days is linked to increased injury risk. For instance, two weeks’ worth of sub-seven-hour kip was linked to a 1.7x greater chance of injury, per a 2021 paper.But, the entry reads: “Despite the evidence that certain aspects of sleep behaviour seem to increase the risk of musculoskeletal injury and pain, sleep should be considered as only a part of the athlete’s overall health and well-being when assessing the athlete for risk of injury”. Related...'Drockling' Feels Amazing On Winter Mornings, But It Can Ruin Your SleepWake Up At 3AM And Can't Get Back To Sleep? You Might Have This ConditionI Quit Running After Lifting – And Beat My PB In Both

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