Within Sex Differences from a Clinical Trial of Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Alcohol Use Disorder Among a Nontreatment Sample.

It is well established that nocturnal sleep of sufficient duration and quality is essential for optimal athletic performance (). For team ball sports athletes (e.g., those in soccer, basketball, volleyball, handball, and rugby), the physiological and cognitive demands of training and competition are exceptionally high (). These athletes must repeatedly execute complex motor skills, make rapid decisions under pressure, sustain high-intensity intermittent effort, and remain alert throughout matches that last 60 to 90 minutes or longer (). Crucially, each of these performance capabilities is highly sensitive to sleep loss. Even modest reductions in sleep duration may impair reaction time, decision-making accuracy, sprint performance, and technical skill execution (; ; ). Despite the well-documented importance of sleep, team ball sports athletes frequently encounter environmental and scheduling factors that compromise their nocturnal sleep. These include pre-competition anxiety and arousal, travel across time zones causing jet lag, late evening training or matches, and early morning travel for away fixtures (; ; ; ). In such contexts, daytime napping emerges as a practical, non-pharmacological strategy to mitigate sleep debt and enhance overall recovery (; ). Daytime napping serves two complementary purposes. First, it can compensate for partial sleep deprivation incurred during the previous night, restoring alertness and attenuating performance decrements (). Second, recent evidence suggests that daytime napping may confer additional ergogenic benefits even following a presumed normal night’s sleep. Physiologically, this may be achieved by reducing accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure, promoting parasympathetic autonomic dominance, and facilitating the clearance of metabolic byproducts within the central nervous system (; ; ; ).