40 WINKS FOR 40 YARDS:

Want To Get Faster, Smarter? Sleep 10 Hours (Allison Aubrey, 6/07/10, NPR)

A study from researchers at Stanford University finds that extra hours of sleep at night can help improve football players' performance on drills such as the 40-yard dash and the 20-yard shuttle.

"The goal was to aim for 10 hours of sleep per night," says Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic. At the beginning of the season, Mah found that the players had moderate levels of daytime fatigue, even though they thought they were getting enough rest at night. Seven players were included in the study.

It's not easy to convince college students to add hours of sleep to their schedules each day. "It's a lot to ask," Mah says, but throughout the season she was able to document a significant extension of nighttime sleep.

Early in the season, the players' average 40-yard dash time was 4.99 seconds. But after six weeks of extra ZZZs, the average time dropped one-tenth of a second — to 4.89 seconds.