The Rundown

Past Athletic Performance vs. Future Success. A new review from a team out of the University of Technology Kaiserslautern in Germany has found that athletes who succeed in junior age categories are mostly different from athletes who succeed in adult competition. Put another way, past athletic performance does not predict future results.

Lead author Arne Gullich wanted to answer the question: When comparing top juniors to top seniors, is the comparison of the same people? Or are they two different populations?

To find out, Gullich and his team pooled the results of 110 studies with 38,000 junior athletes to discover how many of them went on to achieve a similar level of success as seniors. Alternatively, they pooled 79 studies with 23,000 senior athletes to figure out how many of them had achieved similar levels of success as juniors. The largest category of sports represented were track and field, cycling and swimming.

Gullich found that most successful juniors didn’t become successful seniors and vice versa. For example: 89 percent of international-class under-17 and under-18 athletes never reach that levels as seniors and 83 percent of international-class seniors didn’t reach international-class at the under-17 and under-18 level.

The team’s results upend the theory that how good you are as a junior will predict how good you are as a senior, as well as the idea that success at both levels is predicted by the same factors. Gullich goes on to argue that the components that predict junior success, including a focus on training to maximize immediate performance, may actually work against sustained long-term improvement.

PM Workout. Physical activity raises your heart rate and your body temperature, two outcomes that typically don’t lead to good sleep. But according to a few recent studies, working out at night may not have a negative impact on sleep.

A 2018 review on evening exercise and sleep found that late day workouts, when compared to no exercise, were associated with more time in REM and deep sleep. One study in this review did note that higher body temperature at bedtime was related to more wake-ups during the night and less efficient sleep. But its authors also mention that these negative effects may not happen if there is at least one hour between the end of a vigorous workout and sleep.

For a 2020 study, researchers looked at 34 healthy men and women ages 18-45 who regularly exercised. It found no significant sleep quality differences between morning or afternoon and evening workouts, based on data from fitness trackers. Also, the intensity of the exercise didn’t affect sleep quality.

Despite these results, the takeaway is: Do what works for you. The effects of exercise at different times of day may vary for different people so if you can workout after dinner, fall asleep and feel rested in the morning, go for it.

Extra Point

Watch

Facing Monsters. Described as a film that “digs deep into the psyche of West Australian surfer Kerby Brown,” this story follows Brown on his quest to ride a wave in the deep Southern Ocean that no one has ever surfed. Brown getting seriously hurt is guaranteed and I’m not sure they ever dig deep enough into his psyche to explain his obsession. But the ocean photography is spectacular. It makes the wave the true star. Facing Monsters is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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Well Far Daily. Host Amy Hopkinson leads this podcast, which offers bite-size tips and tricks to help you meet your running goals. Episodes are between two and six minutes long and recent topics include how to deal with negative thinking, protein needs, and creating a calm, clear mind.

Read

Can Going Barefoot Improve Your Sleep? Emily Blackwood investigates the relationship between grounding (the practice of having direct contact with the earth by lying on the ground or walking barefoot) and sleep in this article for Outside magazine.