TY - JOUR T1 - Sleep in professional rugby league athletes: methods to quantify and assess, factors influencing and strategies to aid (PhD Academy Award) JF - British Journal of Sports Medicine JO - Br J Sports Med DO - 10.1136/bjsports-2019-101801 SP - bjsports-2019-101801 AU - Johnpaul Caia Y1 - 2020/07/02 UR - http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2020/07/02/bjsports-2019-101801.abstract N2 - I explored methods to monitor sleep in athletes, factors influencing sleep in rugby league and examined strategies to improve sleep in athletes.For athletes, sleep is integral for recovery and preparation around training and competition.1 However, sleep is often compromised in athletes,1 who often encounter circumstances that can disturb their sleep (eg, late competition, training schedules, travel).1 Identifying such difficulties and examining strategies to enhance sleep was vital.To start, I examined the agreement between self-perceived sleep and sleep estimated via activity monitors within professional rugby league, with 63 participants wearing a valid and reliable monitoring device.2 Concurrently, estimates of sleep duration (hh:mm) were collected. Correlations examined the relationship between sleep duration estimated via activity monitors and subjective estimates.The second stage of my work explored factors influencing sleep. I examined differences in sleep across 15 senior (25.5±3.7 years) and 15 junior rugby league athletes (18.8±0.9 years), … ER -