The Effects of Sleep Loss on Military Physical Performance
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REVIEW ARTICLE
The Effects of Sleep Loss on Military Physical Performance Clementine Grandou1 · Lee Wallace1 · Hugh H. K. Fullagar1 · Rob Duffield1 · Simon Burley1 Published online: 17 May 2019 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract As part of both training and active service, military members can be exposed to prolonged periods of sleep loss. Given the extent of physical and cognitive performances viewed as critical to successful military performance, such sleep disruption may present risk to health and performance. The primary aim of this narrative review was to investigate evidence on the effect of inadequate sleep on measures of aerobic capacity, anaerobic capacity, muscular strength and muscular endurance in military personnel. Sleep loss appears to have the greatest negative impact on aerobic capacity, muscular endurance and military-specific performance in military populations. The findings showed varied results for handgrip strength and anaerobic capacity, with sleep loss inducing a decrease in mean power of the upper body. In comparison to other measures of performance, lower-body muscular strength appeared to be resilient to sleep restriction. However, due to the limited evidence and inter-individual variability in results there is no clear consensus on the specific volume of sleep loss that induces significant or meaningful performance decrements. The difficulties of conducting well-designed and -controlled interventions in military populations are appreciated. However, due to the low quality of reporting and lack of control for confounders (i.e. physical activity, load carriage, prior sleep debt, motivation and energy intake) in the majority of studies, it is difficult to establish the relationship between sleep loss and physical performance in military populations.
Key Points
1 Introduction
Sleep loss appears to negatively affect aerobic capacity, upper body anaerobic capacity, muscular endurance and military task performance.
Inadequate or ‘poor’ sleep has been defined as sustained wakefulness, less than 7 h sleep per night for healthy adults, high frequency of wake after sleep onset and/or irregular sleep patterns [1]. Employees at risk of inadequate sleep include those subjected to shift work (i.e. firefighters [2]), professional athletes (i.e. those travelling across different time zones [3]) and military soldiers (i.e. sustained wakefulness during warfare and field-based training exercises [4]). Sleep conditions in military forces may have the most consequential ramifications where physical and cognitive processes are used to enact decisions in situations that can impact on life and death. This population is commonly exposed to early wake times prior to 0600 h, prolonged wakefulness [i.e. sleep deprivation (SD) of > 24 h, a common occurrence for soldiers during warfare] or irregular sleep patterns [i.e. sleep restriction (SR) of 3–4 h of sleep per night, during training and combat scenarios], and sustained physical and cognitive stressors during training and/or on the battlefield [
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