Season 1 #Episode 15 Sleep Disorders in Elite Athletes with Johnpaul Caia

In today’s episode, I speak to Johnpaul Caia from University of Queensland. John Paul is a performance scientist for the Brisbane Broncos Rugby League Club and is currently completing his PhD at the University of Queensland examining sleep and recovery methods in professional rugby league athletes. Prior to this, Johnpaul received his Bachelor's Degree and First-Class Honours in Human Movement from RMIT University, before completing his Master's Degree in Health and Sport Science at the University Memphis. Johnpaul has extensive sport science experience across multiple team sports at the professional, collegiate and junior levels and is interested strategies to improve the performance and recovery of athletes.

 In this episode of S4P Radio we cover

• Short introduction and background
• Why and how did you get interested in sleep and performance research?
• Can you give an overview of your research and the groups that you work with?
• Why did you conduct this study? Can you explain rugby league players anthropometric characteristics?
• There is very little on this subjective (few studies in NFL and ice hockey), What was the aim/s of the study?
• Methods, how did you do this? Objective/subjective measures
• What did you find?
• Did the results surprise you, the team and the management?
• What does this mean in the context of improving athletic performance?
• What is your next project?
• What is your “number one sleep do” and “sleep don’t” for listeners?

 Contact Johnpaul

Email: Johnpaul.Caia@broncos.com.au

Twitter: @JohnpaulCaia

JPs research papers

• Johnpaul Caia,Heidi R. Thornton, Vincent G. Kelly, Tannath J. Scott, Shona L. Halson, Balin Cupples, Matthew W. Driller. (2017) Does self-perceived sleep reflect sleep estimated via activity monitors in professional rugby league athletes?. Journal of Sports Sciences 0:0, pages 1-5. 

• Johnpaul Caia,Shona L. Halson, Tannath J. Scott, Vincent G. Kelly. (2017) Intra-individual variability in the sleep of senior and junior rugby league athletes during the competitive season. Chronobiology International 34:9, pages 1239-1247. 

• Andrew Scott, Johnpaul Caia, Riley Forbes, Vincent Kelly, Sleep disordered breathing and cephalometric predictors in an Australian rugby league team http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/50/suppl_61/PA2345, European Respiratory Journal 2017 50: PA2345.