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While I'm sure more sleep probably does boost fitness (and cognitive) performance, this study is pretty narrow in scope and tracks results of a women's tennis t

by rjett 17y ago

While I'm sure more sleep probably does boost fitness (and cognitive) performance, this study is pretty narrow in scope and tracks results of a women's tennis team. About the only semi-useful metric they track is the sprint times, but even that isn't very useful because the researchers didn't have a third phase of the study where the women were asked to decrease their sleep back to stage 1 amounts. Having a third stage would help control for performance increase due to practice time. The other metrics they track are highly variable in a sport such as tennis because players can put speeds and spins on the ball to affect the outcome. To control for this, you'd probably have to track a player's performance in a series of matches against the same opponent in addition to having a stage 3 like I described above. Still, tennis is more skill-based and less fitness-based compared to other sports like running, so I think it would be hard to draw conclusions from a study like this.

anonjon 17y ago
I've got to disagree there. Sprinting around chasing a tiny yellow ball and hitting it is extremely fitness based. This is especially true of a top ranked tennis team like the Stanford women. The players on that team are already going to be pretty good, and most likely are not going to have an overall increase of that large a % over the course of a few months of training. (These women have most likely been playing tennis for years and they keep up with their training in the off season, it isn't like highschool where the team has a month of everyone 'getting back into shape'). A criticism that you could have is that 'fitness' is very ill defined. Are we measuring sheer physical endurance or ability at a physical task? I mean, your brain is connected to the rest of your body, and it governs your body's functioning. For purposes, it is just another body part (albeit an important one). So it strikes me as strange that we would really even want to measure mental ability separately from physical ability, as they are pretty much impossible to measure independently.

by rjett 17y ago

anonjon 17y ago

I've got to disagree there. Sprinting around chasing a tiny yellow ball and hitting it is extremely fitness based. This is especially true of a top ranked tennis team like the Stanford women. The players on that team are already going to be pretty good, and most likely are not going to have an overall increase of that large a % over the course of a few months of training. (These women have most likely been playing tennis for years and they keep up with their training in the off season, it isn't like highschool where the team has a month of everyone 'getting back into shape'). A criticism that you could have is that 'fitness' is very ill defined. Are we measuring sheer physical endurance or ability at a physical task? I mean, your brain is connected to the rest of your body, and it governs your body's functioning. For purposes, it is just another body part (albeit an important one). So it strikes me as strange that we would really even want to measure mental ability separately from physical ability, as they are pretty much impossible to measure independently.