Dados do Trabalho

Título

Sleep Quality and Performance of Adolescent Female Football Athletes: A Pilot Study

Introdução

Sleep is a physiological state that plays a fundamental role in the healthy development of adolescents, with daily implications, especially in behavior, attention and emotion ( Hosokawa et al., 2022). However, many youth football teams do not take teenagers' quality sleep into account. Associated with this, inappropriate behaviors can harm the quality of life, and, consequently, the development and performance of adolescent athletes ( Erlacher et a., 2011);

Objetivo

To analyze the quality of sleep and performance of football athletes in the female youth category;

Métodos

The sample was made up of 32 teenagers (girls) from the youth football categories aged 10 to 24 years, from clubs in the city of Recife (Pernambuco). This is field research with a quantitative approach and cross-sectional design. All participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire with screen time. Sleep quality was assessed using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the subjective assessment of performance using the Likert scale regarding the perception of each athlete's sporting performance, completed by a member of the technical committee (Arruda et al., 2018);

Resultados

The prevalence of poor sleep quality, performance and screen time were 27.8%, 22.8% and >4 hours, respectively. The analysis of covariance revealed better performance in adolescents with better sleep quality (PSQI ≤ 5 ; all p values < 0.05).

Conclusões

Adolescent athletes from the youth football categories have a high prevalence of poor sleep quality. It was also demonstrated that screen time proved to be a mediator of the association between sleep quality and could cause harm to the athlete performance.

Palavras -chave

Sleep quality; soccer; teenagers; performance.