The coach started practice at 5:30am. He believed these early mornings would teach toughness and discipline. The team responded well to the challenge and 4:30am wakeup calls became the norm. With puffy eyes and heavy feet, they would stroll in, tired but ready to work. This part of his approach was successful. His team was tough.
“But they’re just not listening,” said the coach, referring to the fact that the students did not seem to be retaining information from practice. Whether it was a new skill or a logistical note, like when to be on the bus for an upcoming tournament, details did not seem to stick. He also noted that, although team discipline was high, many of the athletes were having a tough time making weight.
“John,” captain of the wrestling team, was dedicated. He got out of his car at 5:10 am in the winter dark, put his hood up and braved the wind and snow on his walk toward the practice facility. He and his teammates nodded to each other but did not talk much, still groggy, but determined. Once they had all assembled in the wrestling room, which was sweltering with radiator heat, the coach blew a whistle and they automatically entered a pre-practice warmup. They trained hard. John was a leader, challenging, encouraging, and listening intently to cues from the head coach.
This morning, the team had to do a few extra accountability drills at the end of practice because, the night before, a few of them were late to the bus heading to a dual meet across town. “Honestly,” John admitted, “[the athletes who were late] care a lot and just forgot.” He was echoing one of the coach’s concerns that, more often than normal, information did not seem to stick with this group. While there were countless possible factors at play, sleep deprivation was an immediate concern.
Sleep deprivation, or what some researchers refer to as prolonged wakefulness, directly impacts “attentional functions, working memory, and long-term memory” (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, 2007). Especially on mornings like these when, after the previous night’s match, the athletes did not return to campus until 10:30 pm, sleep deprivation was not possible, it was pre-determined. Many acknowledged, including John, that after commuting from campus to home, then eating and showering, the earliest they could be in bed was midnight. At best. With alarms set before 5:00 am, the schedule made sleep deprivation an absolute outcome. The schedule was impacting the athletes’ attention and memory.
The coach also noted a secondary concern about athletes making weight. Wrestlers compete in classes determined by bodyweight. In order to compete in the 170 lb weight class, for example, the wrestler has to weigh-in on the day of competition to confirm that their bodyweight is true to their division. This often requires disciplined nutritional practices. These guys had discipline. Discipline was not enough. Sleep deprivation was again the suspected culprit.
Sleep deprivation modulates ghrelin and leptin, two key hormones responsible for hunger, satiation, and what sort of food people crave (Taheri et al., 2004). In a study of more than 1,000 participants, sleep deprivation reduced leptin, raised ghrelin, and correlated strongly with weight gain and increased BMI (body-mass index). In other words, chronic sleep deprivation was unintentionally impeding athletes’ ability to maintain their desired body weight. Turning down a Snicker’s bar was not impossible, but the schedule-induced sleep deprivation was stacking the deck against the desired outcome.
The schedule, while well-intentioned (making sure the team was tough and psychologically prepared), seemed to be inadvertently setting the athletes up for failure. During our post-practice debrief and professional development session, we realized that something had to be adjusted – either the schedule, or the expectations.
We discussed the High Order Performance framework to guide self- and system-level reflection as well as future strategy (Davis, 2023). To ensure receptivity with the coach and his staff, we reminded them that coaches, parents, schools, corporations, even governments routinely experience these types of well-intended misalignments (Kerr, 1995).
Forgive yourselves and be willing to reevaluate, we suggested.
After all, the challenge for this team was not a matter of discipline, toughness, or intellect. Physiological processes were set into motion which, due to significant sleep deprivation, contributed predictably to certain outcomes (toughness, mindset) and degraded others (attention, cognition, body weight). The challenge was to step back and rearrange the system, with a more wholistic approach.
Once aware of the situation, he altered the practice schedule, and now has the HOP Framework taped up above his desk.
