Effects of Sleep on Training Effectiveness in Soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood.

摘要

This study assessed where adjusting scheduled sleep periods to better complement biologically driven sleep patterns would improve sleep and performance in Army recruits in basic combat training (BCT). A total of 394 recruits and instructor cadre, 185 in a training company using the standard BCT sleep regimen and 209 in a company using an optimized sleep regimen, were followed throughout BCT using a variety of psycho-physiological measures. A random sample of 95 recruits wore wrist activity monitors to record sleep quantity and quality. Data on physical fitness, marksmanship, and attritions were collected. We report here on the analysis of actigraphic measures and marksmanship for the 94 recruits for whom actigraphy data were available. The 2.5-hour phase delayed sleep schedule improved sleep relative to the standard BCT schedule, resulting in more than 30 minutes of extra sleep per night. Besides schedule, personal factors such as age and gender also influenced recruits average total daily sleep, with younger and female recruits tending to obtain more sleep. Increased nightly sleep during the training of marksmanship skills was also shown to result in greater improvements over subsequent serial marksmanship assessments.