Sleep and Sport: Physical Performance, Mental Performance, Injury Prevention, and Competitive Advantage for Athletes, Coaches, and Trainers

**Selected for 2026 Doody's Core Titles in Sports Medicine**

The relationship between sleep and both mental and physical performance in athletes has become a key issue over the past several years. Sleep and Sport: Physical Performance, Mental Performance, Injury Prevention, and Competitive Advantage for Athletes, Coaches, and Trainers aims to synthesize the growing scientific evidence in this area to help researchers, clinicians, and others interested in sport to understand the fundamentals of sleep health and how these factors relate to athletes. Serving as an important bridge between the sleep and athletics field, this book educates sleep professionals about how their field of expertise relates to various aspects of athletics, while educating sports professionals about the basics of sleep and how it relates to their field of expertise. This is accomplished by explaining some of the basics of sleep health; reviewing the literature on sleep disorders, treatments, and risk factors for athletes; discussing ways that sleep health impacts physical and mental performance; and addressing key specific areas where these fields overlap. In all cases, this text will draw from the existing peer-reviewed literature, in order to provide evidence-based guidance that is objective and well explained.

• Highlights the importance of sleep and its relations to various aspects of athletics
• Provide useful, actionable, evidence-based suggestions for promoting sleep health in athletes
• Contains accessible reviews that point to relevant literature in often-overlooked areas, serving as a helpful guide to all relevant information on this broad topic area

Dr. Michael Grandner is a licensed clinical psychologist, Director of the Sleep and Heath Research Program at the University of Arizona, and Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Clinic at the Banner-University Medical Center in Tucson, AZ. His work focuses on translational sleep research and Behavioral Sleep Medicine, including studies of sleep as a domain of health behavior and the development and implementation of behavioral interventions for insufficient sleep and sleep disorders. Specific areas of focus include: (1) Downstream cardiovascular, metabolic, and behavioral health outcomes associated with habitual sleep duration and/or insufficient sleep, (2) Upstream social, behavioral, and biological determinants of habitual sleep duration, insufficient sleep, and poor sleep quality, and (3) Development and implementation of behavioral interventions for sleep as a domain of health behavior.

Dr. Athey earned a doctorate degree in clinical psychology from Loyola College in Maryland and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in university departments of kinesiology and psychology, respectively. She also received her Bachelor in Business Administration from Roanoke College, where she was an All-American basketball player and inducted into the RC Athletics Hall of Fame.