Postdoc for 'Sleep for Gold': Effective Power Napping in Sports

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In striving for optimal performance, elite athletes draw maximally on their physical and mental capacity. Doing so, they rely heavily on optimal recovery and the ability to get a good night’s sleep. In addition, elite athletes often engage in ‘power napping’. Power naps are short periods of sleep during the day, which athletes use to recover from straining practice in the morning, compensate for lack of sleep during the night, or to rest before an important competition in the evening. Despite clear beliefs about the effectiveness of power napping among athletes and their coaches, scientific evidence for the effectiveness of power napping for performance and recovery in sports is still scarce.
Working towards evidence-based recommendations, Radboud University, the Netherlands Olympic Committee and Netherlands Sports Federation (NOC*NSF), and Mline, therefore initiated the research project 'Sleep for Gold' in 2016.

As a postdoctoral research fellow on 'Sleep for Gold' you will be responsible for the designing, performing, and reporting of experimental studies that address the following research questions:

1. What is the effect of power napping on cognitive and physical performance of (elite) athletes?
2. How long (duration) and when (timing) should athletes nap in order to maximise power napping effectiveness?

In addition, you will write publications based on existing data of elite athletes’ power napping behaviour (monitoring study) and general power napping effectiveness (systematic review).

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