Sleep Big and Win
Football may not really be your game (I probably sound unAmerican but mine's tennis) but a certain Midwestern college's football team found out last fall just how important sleep is after their coach decided to start helping them sleep better. They also won the big game. The coach swears there's a connection. The team is Northwestern and Pat Fitzgerald, the coach, has placed an unusual emphasis on his players’ sleeping behavior as a way to improve their performance, according to The New York Times. In the past, he has changed the times of practices and instituted team naps, but since the beginning of August, in collaboration with the university’s school of engineering, Fitzgerald has had his team undergo a sleep assessment, Steven Braid reports. The idea was to assess the players’ sleep patterns and then suggest ways they can have more and sounder sleep. The players began wearing movement sensor armbands during training camp, except when they are practicing...