Athletes' biological clocks affect their performance

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) – A week before the Super Bowl, a new study suggests that players' performances may depend at least in part on how the game's timing aligns with their body clocks. “The reason why we did this study is that all the existing literature talking about circadian rhythm in sports performance came to the same conclusion: that athletes give their best performance in the evening,” said Roland Brandstaetter, the study’s senior author from the University of Birmingham in the UK. As reported in the journal Current Biology, Brandstaetter and colleagues studied the performance of 121 athletes who competed in competitions. When the researchers separated the athletes into three groups based on their internal clocks, they found that those who naturally get up early reached peak performance in the early afternoon.



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