☕️ S&C Daily — Told to Sleep 10 Hours

October 29, 2026

A new randomized trial in Frontiers in Physiology split 24 female collegiate basketball players into two groups of 12 for six weeks. Both kept their regular basketball training. One group added two repeated-sprint sessions a week: 2-3 sets of 6-10 shuttle sprints of 30 meters, 15 meters down and back, at roughly a 1:4 work-to-rest ratio. The other ran continuously for the same amount of time. Internal training load wasn’t measured.

Both groups got faster on their best repeated sprint. But only the sprint group pulled ahead on the rest: it improved significantly more than the running group on the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test Level 1 and in Wingate peak power, mean power and fatigue index.

A new study in Sports Health tracked 50 Division I athletes from women’s soccer, men’s soccer, baseball and football with WHOOP bands. After two weeks of baseline sleep, they were told to extend their sleep to 10 hours a night for two more weeks, with daily reminders in person from student athletic trainers and through the TeamWorks app. All of it happened in the offseason, away from exams.

Total sleep time didn’t change: 7.63 hours at baseline, 7.51 during extension. Sleep consistency, a measure of how steady their sleep-wake schedule was, did improve, from about 60% to 64%. The authors say the demands of academics and sport make sleep extension a tough ask in college, though it may be feasible in pro sports.

Syracuse freshman receiver Calvin Russell III tore his Achilles running a route at spring practice on March 30, with no contact. His parents recall an initial recovery estimate of nine months to a year. His surgeon cleared him before the Oct. 3 game at UConn, and on Saturday he caught the overtime touchdown and the two-point conversion that beat North Carolina 31-30.

Back home in Miami, his mother drove him to rehab sessions that some days ran at 8 a.m., 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Head coach Fran Brown got up many mornings to work out alongside him and kept him catching passes at practice. “I ain’t come here to sit down. I came here to play football,” Russell told reporters 10 days after surgery.

A new study in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living asked whether a pro hockey team’s preseason testing lined up with what happened in games. Researchers took three seasons of off-ice tests from one team in Germany’s top league (sprint, countermovement jump, bench press and split squat strength relative to body weight, estimated VO2max and body fat) and compared them with the league’s 5-on-5 player-tracking data. The authors are clear these are associations, not cause and effect.

A few links stood out. Players with a stronger bench press relative to body weight tended to see their team create a bigger share of the quality scoring chances, measured by expected goals, while they were on the ice compared with when they were off it. Players with a higher estimated VO2max tended to see the opposite in shot share, which the authors say likely reflects their role, not their fitness. And players with a higher countermovement jump tended to see their team take a bigger share of unblocked shot attempts while they were on the ice. The jump was the only link that held up in every check.

Kentucky women’s basketball returns all eight members of Kenny Brooks’ coaching and support staff for a third season together, including director of strength and conditioning Kevin Konopasek. Brooks compares it to parenting, where staff can’t be played against each other: “We all speak the same language.”

Bayern Munich players’ taped earlobes have drawn attention online. The club’s staff take blood lactate samples from the earlobe instead of the fingertip to tailor training intensity and track how players handle their workloads.

Jack Draper, working back from bone stress in his arm, keeps his conditioning on a Wattbike or VersaClimber to stay off his joints and tendons. The only way to get fitter for endurance, he said, is “by suffering and getting used to the suffering.”

Buffalo State University

Stanford University

Eureka High School

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