Sleep quality in Olympic and non-Olympic combat sports

The medical question

How common is poor sleep among active combat sports athletes, and is it linked to rapid weight loss?

The Fight Medicine Research Institute uses this evidence to frame questions about sleep in fighters who are still competing and its relation to making weight. The study’s self-reported measures and its mixed group of Olympic and non-Olympic combat sports determine which questions it can inform.

Summary

In a questionnaire study of 498 competitive combat sport athletes, 65% were classed as poor sleepers, and losing more than 4% of body weight before competition was associated with poor sleep quality.

What the work reports

• Between January and April 2025, 498 competitive athletes from Olympic and non-Olympic combat sports completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and reported their change in body weight over the 7 days before their most recent competition. A PSQI score above 5 was classed as poor sleep quality, and a loss of more than 4% as rapid weight loss.
• 65% of the athletes (325 of 498) were classed as poor sleepers: 74% in Olympic combat sports and 56% in non-Olympic combat sports. In the main regression model, rapid weight loss (odds ratio 2.70, 95% confidence interval 1.80–4.00), Olympic sport (1.75, 1.25–2.45), male sex (1.65, 1.20–2.30) and sport age in years (1.03, 1.01–1.05) were each associated with higher odds of poor sleep quality.
• The authors conclude that poor sleep quality is common among combat sport athletes and is associated with sport type and rapid weight loss. They state that the findings on rapid weight loss call for caution because it was self-reported after the competition.

Limits to keep in mind

• Cross-sectional. The authors state that the design does not allow causal interpretation.
• Sleep quality and weight loss were self-reported, with no objective sleep measurement and no verification of body weight. Weight loss covered the 7 days before the last competition, while the sleep questionnaire covered the previous month.
• The authors note possible selection bias between the Olympic and non-Olympic groups, that no objective indicator of competitive level was collected, and that information on weight class was lacking.

Source issues recorded

• Group sizes in the article do not fully agree. Table 1 gives 259 men and 239 women. The comparisons in Tables 5 and 6 list 130 and 136 men and 128 and 110 women in the two sport groups, which add up to different totals. Table 1 reports poor sleep quality in 185 of 250 athletes in Olympic combat sports; the note to Table 3 gives 165 events among 246. This record uses the Table 1 figures.

Publication status and notices

Published in Frontiers in Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal. Original research article in Frontiers in Psychology.

Form of this work: Version of record. The version of record is the final article as issued by its publisher.

No correction or retraction notice was found in Crossref or Europe PMC when this record was checked.

Fight Medicine Research Institute contribution

Fight Medicine Research Institute selected and catalogued this study, prepared an original research summary, verified its bibliographic details, and maintains the associated citation record.

PDF files

Article details

Relationship

External research catalogued by the Fight Medicine Research Institute. The original authors, journal and DOI are unchanged.

Published online

3 June 2026

Repository date

3 June 2026 (Europe PMC first-publication date)

Date used here

3 June 2026 (Crossref publisher deposit, online publication date)

Rights

CC BY 4.0. Open access under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY 4.0), as recorded by Europe PMC and the licence link in the source record. The summary on this page is Fight Medicine Research Institute’s own wording. No text or figure from the article is reproduced here. Licence terms.

Source check

12 November 2026, against PubMed Central full text, Crossref and Europe PMC. Checked under the direction of Casey C. Sears, Founder. An LLM was utilized as a research tool with direct human oversight.

Appraisal

The check covered bibliographic details, links, licence and notices. It is not a formal critical appraisal of the full paper.

Clinical review

None. This record is a research summary, not clinical education.

Funding and conflicts

The article states no funding and no competing interests. The authors state that generative AI was used only for language editing.

Catalog

FH-053, added 12 November 2026

Cite the original work

These files cite the work by its own authors, journal and DOI. Fight Medicine Research Institute appears only in a note, as curator of this catalog page.

Şeref Eroğlu, Tülay Ceylan, Mehmet Türkmen, Taner Yılmaz, Osman Imamoğlu, Irfan Kara, et al.. Sleep quality in Olympic and non-Olympic combat sports: associations with sex, rapid weight loss, and sport age (a PSQI-based analysis). Frontiers in Psychology. 2026;17:1847782. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1847782

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Related on this website

• Fighter Health: Sleep and life after competition