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T IS 3:00 P.M. on a
chilly February afternoon in Minneapolis and the Utah Jazz
are trying to hang on to the final
playoff seed in the Western Conference during a hectic stretch of
eight games in 13 days. The Jazz
endured a late flight from Salt
Lake City following a win over
the Thunder. Tip-off with the TWolves is just five hours away.
It’s nap time.
“I think almost everyone does
it,” Jazz veteran point guard Earl
Watson told The Huffington Post.
The game-day nap is a longstanding NBA tradition among
bleary-eyed players during the
grueling 82-game season. According to Dr. Margot Putukian, director of sports medicine at Princeton University, the activity may
aid the body even more than the
players are aware.
“Sleep deprivation has been
linked to pain and complaints of
muscle and joint pain,” Putukian
told The Huffington Post. “We
know how helpful restorative
sleep is.”
The rigorous schedule for NBA
teams often includes late postgame flights and early morning
shooting sessions, making a full
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night’s sleep hard to come by. According to an April 2012 ESPN The
Magazine article, athletes’ bodies
may fail to release a crucial growth
hormone — which stimulates the
healing of muscle and bone — due
to uneven sleep patterns. In turn,
napping can become a necessity
for peak performance.
According to a 1999 article
published in the Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine, the ef-
HUFFINGTON
03.24.13
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A weekly
feature that
highlights
ways to
handle the
pressures
around us.
There is this myth
that if you exercise, you
can get away with less sleep.
Most studies are now showing
that if you exercise, you
actually need more sleep.”
fects of travel fatigue and jet-lag
can begin “reducing dexterity in a
technical procedure.”
A Stanford University study,
published in the San Francisco
Chronicle and conducted from
2005 to 2008, discovered that
Cardinal basketball players who
slept two to three hours more
than they were accustomed to ran
faster sprints and improved efficiency in both free-throw and
3-point shooting by 9 percent.