Notably, the overall decline in performance appeared to be disproportionately experienced by East Coast teams traveling west. This is likely due to the fact that a player is apt to get a good night’s sleep at home compared to sleeping in a hotel. The study found that visiting teams didn’t rebound as well, whether the game was played within its own time zone or three time zones away. ![]() Rebounding, by contrast, is an activity that tends to reflect brute-force effort. In any given game, you didn’t have one team that was shooting worse like you normally would.” “Everyone was shooting better,” McHill said. The study found that shooting accuracy in the bubble improved significantly. In a precise activity like shooting a basketball, even slightly disrupting a player’s central circadian clock could be the difference between a ball that swishes through the net and one that rattles in and out of the rim. ![]() When a team travels across the country into different time zones, the mismatch between the new time zone and the team’s home time zone has a physiological effect in a very specific part of the body: the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the brain’s hypothalamus. “Shooting was affected by travel across time zones, whereas rebounding was impacted by travel in general,” McHill said. Specifically, researchers found teams that didn’t travel had improved shooting accuracy and rebounding, although McHill said the detriments may be attributed to different factors. In their analysis, McHill and Chinoy were able to discern statistically significant differences in performance among teams that traveled within their time zone and across time zones. The researchers used this unique opportunity to compare the performance of teams during travel before the COVID-19 pandemic with the performance of those same teams comfortably ensconced at Disney World. Better shooting, more vigorous rebounding McHill partnered with a grad school colleague, Evan Chinoy, a sleep and circadian physiologist who works in San Diego for Leidos Inc., a biomedical research firm. “When the NBA suspended its season, and then started this bubble experiment in Orlando, I realized it was an opportunity to do what I’d been thinking about for a long time.” “I’m a big sports fan, and I always wanted to look at how travel – and potentially jet lag and sleep disturbance – impacts sports performance,” he said. The weirdly truncated pro basketball season of 2019-20 afforded a prime opportunity for a natural experiment.Īfter halting its season in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Basketball Association resumed the last two months of the season in July with the 22 top teams confined to play in a travel-less “bubble” within Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. To best adapt, you’ll want to get acclimated to your new time zone as quickly as possible.” The NBA’s bubble: A natural experiment This study suggests that small misalignments between the internal body clock and a new time zone (i.e., jet lag) can impact your accuracy and impair performance. “If you’re a businessman who needs to present a sales pitch, being accurate and precise could be very important. “Travel is hard for everyone,” McHill said. ![]() Their conclusion: Whether you’re LeBron James or a rec-league scrub who travels for business, your performance on the road depends to a large degree on the alignment of your internal body clock with the new time zone and the quality of your sleep. ![]() In a study published today in the journal Scientific Reports, McHill and a colleague closely examined the travel performance of elite professional basketball players. The body clock and sleep question especially intrigues Andrew McHill, Ph.D., an occupational health scientist at Oregon Health & Science University who specializes in sleep disturbance and circadian rhythms.
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