Every year when I go to re:invent, Amazon's big conference in Las Vegas, I schedule nap time from 3pm to 5pm. When I'm there I meeting with lots of different people, from as early as 7am to as late (early?) as 1am, and sometimes I'm out till 3am or later.<p>That nap is the only thing that makes it bearable. And I get mocked for it and I don't care. But sleep is no joke.<p>I also do all the blue shift/night shift stuff on my phones and laptops year round, and that seemed to make a big difference when I started doing it. I went as far as replacing every light I need at night to one that can go as low as 1850K, so I see no blue light for a few hours before bed.
I’ve always wondered if the home team advantage is mostly caused by sleep deprivation.<p>I know baseball stadiums have idiosyncrasies (home run distance varies), but I’m not aware if anything similar for basketball.<p>The home team advantage is also pretty striking for win rates in the NBA: 58% of games are were won by the home team in the 2017-2018 season[0].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_advantage" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_advantage</a>
Could one team gain a massive advantage by taking the sleep environment seriously and figuring out how to prevent sleep deprivation in players?<p>A sort of hidden opportunity along the lines of the statistical metrics that revolutionized baseball.
> To fight back, he says he hopes to grab a few hours of sleep on the plane to Houston. He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee.<p>From what I have seen, most pro teams stay at some of the nicest hotels in said visiting city. With that said, I'm surprised to see the "He hopes the hotel bed there is OK, though that's never a guarantee." But maybe that's also just coming from my own experience of sleeping extra well in higher end hotel beds than my own bed at home.
As coping mechanism, the Portland Trailblazers from the NW who travel the most miles of NBA teams, have tuned pre-game coffee routine : <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25667397/the-game-day-caffeine-routine-keeps-portland-trail-blazers-nba-most-well-traveled-team-running" rel="nofollow">https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/25667397/the-game-day-ca...</a>
This article is about how "tinderization" has reduced the need for players to go out and stay out late at night clubs when on the road, and attempts to map that to a measurable decrease in home field advantage<p><a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinderization-today-nba" rel="nofollow">https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/page/presents18969358/tinde...</a>
I have often wondered if professional sports in an effort to increase profits, increase the number of games in a season (MLB 162 games, NBA 82, NFL 16) plus pre-season, training camp etc. I think they may actually be decreasing their profitability because the quality of play suffers from the grueling schedules, not only sleep depravation but injuries and etc. Also, there could be a factor of over saturation; the games seem less special if they are on every day.<p>It would be interesting if one of the major sports leagues would experiment with a reduced schedule to test that theory ? Never happen I know.
Seems like MLB (baseball) players have it even worse. 162 games in 6 months and that’s just the regular season. Games average longer and if extra innings can go 5+ hours and well past midnight.
> "Based on ... about 10,000 empirical scientific studies, the number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep or less without showing any impairment, rounded to a whole number ... is zero."<p>This statement made me think about reports of successful people wherein one supposed factor to their success was ability to "function" on less sleep (Marissa Mayer 4 hours, Jon Gruden 4 hours, Tom Ford 3 hours)
If this NBA player thing is important, which is the life of about 400 players who travel for work seldom much over 100 days per year, how many road warrior consultants and salesmen are in the same trap with the same or worse consequences?
> Studies show five hours of sleep per night over the course of a week lowers testosterone levels by an equivalent of 11 years of aging.<p>Do their testosterone levels recover after going back to a normal sleep schedule?
Related to this, one of the most interesting podcast episodes I had listened to was Howard Beck talking to the NBA schedule makers and all the factors they have to account for when making the schedule. Part of the podcast talks about rest and how rest is accounted for when scheduling. Well worth a listen.<p><a href="https://player.fm/series/the-full-48/nba-scheduling-czars-tom-carelli-evan-wasch" rel="nofollow">https://player.fm/series/the-full-48/nba-scheduling-czars-to...</a>
I’ve said this on HN before, but I got the eight sleep pod and im loving it. The companion app legitimately helps me manage sleep deprivation and I’ve had much higher quality sleep.<p>As someone who also ankifies everything, I’ve noticed my recall has improved ever since I started sleeping more each night consistently (coincided with when I got the Pod).<p>I’m sure NBA players could benefit from something like this
Summary (from 4277 words): From a study of 18 players, testosterone levels
fell from 88th percentile among males their age to 32nd percentile by
midseason. Their grueling travel schedule, and not the exertion of on-court
play, was to blame as non-player personnel also experienced similar declines.
Studies show five hours of sleep per night over the course of a week lowers
testosterone levels by an equivalent of 11 years of aging.<p>Verbosity is an existential threat.
How is this even news worthy? There's so many things I could think of more important than the sleep routine of an luxury- accommodated group of athletes, who by greed decide to play 82 games per season.<p>I believe it has been suggested to shorten the season but they neglect to do it because it means less money.
I am a firm believer in the importance of 8+ hours of sleep but I have trouble feeling sorry for these guys as they are earning obscene 8 figure salaries in some cases and around a million at a MINIMUM for a player with 1 year of experience.