{"id":18299,"date":"2026-08-28T16:44:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/sleep-and-seasons\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T16:44:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T15:44:37","slug":"sleep-and-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/sleep-and-seasons\/","title":{"rendered":"Sport science: sleep, shoes and the one percents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The marginal gains industry sold a story. Here is what the data actually supports: sleep matters more than anything you can buy, and the shoe matters less than the shop says.<\/p>\n\n<h2 id=\"sleep\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sleep<\/h2>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Athletes who averaged under seven hours across a season missed 34% more training days through illness. That is the largest effect in the dataset, and it costs nothing.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"660\" src=\"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/gym-1024x660.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18185\" srcset=\"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gym-1024x660.webp 1024w, https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gym-300x193.webp 300w, https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gym-768x495.webp 768w, https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gym-1536x990.webp 1536w, https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/gym.webp 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A club recovery suite: the beds are the expensive part, and the least used.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n<h2 id=\"shoes\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Shoes<\/h2>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The best modern racing shoe is worth about 2% over a rival\u2019s from five years ago. The advantage between this season\u2019s model and last season\u2019s is inside the measurement error.<\/p>\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Carbon plates help on the road; on grass the effect disappears.<\/li><li>Foam degrades after 300km, faster than any brochure admits.<\/li><li>The placebo effect of a new shoe is real, measurable, and about a week long.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n<h2 id=\"the-one-percents\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">The one percents<\/h2>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They exist. They are just not for sale.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The marginal gains industry sold a story. Here is what the data actually supports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":18180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_spx_person_id":0,"_spx_fixture_id":0,"_spx_pick_id":0,"_spx_eg_facts_label":"","_spx_eg_facts":"","_spx_figure_caption":"","_spx_news_feat":"","_spx_video_url":"","_spx_duration":"","_spx_views":"","_spx_presenter":"","_spx_media_state":"","_spx_start_at":"","_spx_media_status":"","_spx_episode":"","_spx_subject":"","_spx_subject_role":"","_spx_story_year":"","_spx_duration_seconds":0,"_spx_view_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[143,214,227],"spx_comp":[],"spx_fixture_ref":[],"spx_series":[],"spx_format":[310],"spx_video_kind":[],"spx_show":[],"spx_sport":[],"spx_flag":[],"class_list":["post-18299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-long-reads","tag-footwear","tag-recovery","tag-sport-science","spx_format-long-read"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_comp","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_comp?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_fixture_ref","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_fixture_ref?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_series?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_format?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_video_kind","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_video_kind?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_show","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_show?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_sport","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_sport?post=18299"},{"taxonomy":"spx_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preview.sportpulse.anpsthemes.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/spx_flag?post=18299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}