Body clock affects racing prowess
By Janet Raloff
When it comes to athletic performance, everyone’s a night owl, a new study suggests.
Shawn D. Youngstedt and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina in Columbia erased time-of-day cues in 25 trained collegiate swimmers by keeping them perpetually in low lighting for 2 days at the school’s fitness center. Throughout the study, each athlete adhered to a short sleep-wake cycle: 1 hour of rest followed by 2 hours of sedentary activity. The starting time of the cycle differed among the participants.