Contributed by Natasha Ragland, MS
Every serious athlete knows their sport changes their body. What’s less understood is how different sports change the way they sleep, not just how long, but how deeply, how efficiently, and how well the body recovers between training sessions.
Most research on elite athletes and sleep relies on small lab studies with limited sample sizes. To understand how different sports shape sleep, and how elite athletes sleep compared to the general population, Eight Sleep analyzed a sample of 36,196 nights of sleep data from 120 Eight Sleep elite male and female athletes across three sport types: field sports like soccer and basketball (n=39), endurance sports like running and cycling (n=54), and power sports like weightlifting and MMA (n=27). We then compared those results with those of 600 age-matched Eight Sleep members.
Key takeaways
- Eight Sleep endurance athletes had the lowest sleeping heart rate (HR; 44 bpm) and highest heart rate variability (HRV; 98 ms) of any sport type, reflecting the cardiac adaptations that long-term aerobic training produces.
- Eight Sleep power sport athletes averaged 8 more minutes of deep sleep per night than endurance athletes, and field sport athletes averaged 5 more minutes, likely driven by the greater muscle repair demands of explosive training.
- Eight Sleep members averaged a Routine Consistency score of 72. Across all three sport types, Eight Sleep athletes scored higher, with endurance athletes averaging 80, power athletes 77, and field sport athletes 74.
The results are clear: each sport type produces a distinct recovery and sleep profile
Eight Sleep elite endurance athletes averaged a sleeping HR 12 bpm lower and an HRV 39 ms higher than the Eight Sleep general population
Endurance athletes averaged a sleeping HR of 44 bpm, 12 beats per minute lower than the Eight Sleep general population (56 bpm) and significantly lower than both field sport and power athletes (50 bpm).
Their HRV averaged 98 ms, nearly 40 ms higher than the general population (59 ms) and significantly higher than field sport (80 ms) and power athletes (78 ms).
Why do endurance athletes show such a distinct recovery profile from other sport types and the general population during sleep?
- Long-term endurance training changes more than just the muscles your body uses to move. Your heart is a muscle that has to keep up, too, working to pump oxygen-rich blood to muscles for hours at a time. Over time, the heart’s chambers enlarge so it can pump more blood with each beat (Ref).
- A bigger, more efficient heart doesn’t need to beat as often at rest, producing the low sleeping HR that is one of the most recognizable signs of a well-trained endurance athlete (Ref).
- Chronic endurance training also changes the signals the nervous system sends to the heart, shifting it toward a more relaxed state. That shift is what drives the higher HRV observed in endurance athletes (Ref).
All athletes log similar hours, but power and field sport athletes get more deep sleep than endurance athletes
Total sleep time was similar across all three groups, ranging from 7.3 to 7.6 hours, comparable to the general population (7.3).
Where the groups diverge is in deep sleep. Power athletes averaged 1.35 hours in deep sleep per night (18.3%) and field sport athletes 1.31 hours in deep sleep (18.4%), both significantly more than endurance athletes (1.22 hours, 17.0%), despite all three groups logging similar total sleep time. That translates to roughly 8 and 5 more minutes of deep sleep per night for power and field sport athletes, respectively, when compared to endurance athletes.
That gap extends to the general population as well. Eight Sleep members averaged 1.36 hours of deep sleep per night (19.1%), significantly more than endurance athletes, while field sport and power athletes did not differ significantly from the general population.
Table 1. Sleep metrics by sport type: pairwise comparisons across field sport, endurance, and power athletes
Footnote: FS = field sport; End = endurance; Pow = power; bpm = beats per minute; ms = milliseconds; hrs = hours. ns = not significant. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. Significance based on pairwise comparisons using Student’s t-test, Welch’s t-test, or Mann-Whitney U test depending on normality. No multiple comparison correction was applied.
Table 2. Sleep metrics by sport type: pairwise comparisons against age-matched Eight Sleep members
Footnote: FS = field sport; End = endurance; Pow = power; Ctrl = age-matched Eight Sleep member control group (n=600); bpm = beats per minute; ms = milliseconds; hrs = hours. ns = not significant. * p<0.05; ** p<0.01; *** p<0.001. Significance based on pairwise comparisons using Student’s t-test, Welch’s t-test, or Mann-Whitney U test depending on normality. No multiple comparison correction was applied.
Why do power and field sport athletes spend more time in deep sleep, and why do endurance athletes spend less?
- Research suggests that deep sleep increases in response to short, explosive bouts of activity, as the micro-damage caused by powerful muscular exertion triggers the body to prioritize the growth hormone release and tissue repair that deep sleep supports (Ref, Ref). Power and field sport athletes, whose training is more explosive and sprint-based, appear to reflect that pattern in their sleep composition.
- Endurance athletes, by contrast, place a different kind of stress on the body, one that demands cardiovascular efficiency over muscular repair (Ref). Their lower deep sleep relative to the general population may reflect that distinction.
- Taken together, these differences suggest that sport-specific recovery demands are reflected in measurable changes in sleep composition.
Endurance athletes maintained the most consistent sleep schedules, outperforming other sport types and general population
Our Sleep Consistency Score measures how consistently someone falls asleep and wakes up within 1 hour of their typical times across a 30-day period, on a scale of 0 to 100, with scores of 80 and above considered good.
Endurance athletes scored significantly higher than field sport athletes on sleep schedule consistency (80 vs. 74 average consistency scores), and were the only group to cross the 80-point threshold. The difference between endurance and power athletes (80 vs. 77) was not statistically significant.
When compared to the general population (72 average consistency score), endurance and power athletes both scored significantly higher, while field sport athletes did not differ significantly from the general population. Even so, all three sport types averaged higher consistency scores than the general population, suggesting that elite athletes tend to maintain more structured sleep and wake schedules overall.
Eight Sleep analyzed 36,196 nights from 120 Eight Sleep elite athletes across three sport types
Eight Sleep’s 120 elite male and female athletes were grouped into three categories based on the physical demands of their sport.
- Endurance athletes, such as marathon runners and cyclists, sustain effort at a high percentage of their aerobic capacity continuously for two hours or more.
- Power athletes, such as weightlifters and MMA fighters, produce short, explosive bursts of strength or speed, demanding everything from the body over the course of a few minutes..
- Field sport athletes, such as basketball and soccer players, combine both, running for an hour or more while still producing powerful bursts of speed and strength throughout.
With those groupings established, Eight Sleep analyzed 36,196 nights of sleep data across the three sport types, field sports (n=39), endurance (n=54), and power (n=27). Per-athlete nightly averages were calculated across more than 20 metrics, including HR