The purpose of the paper is to describe the impact of adverse conditions on human physical performance and to apply the findings to the military environment with the focus on the effectiveness of training resistance to the chosen adverse condition. The subject under investigation is sleep deprivation because very often soldiers spend days without sleep that is why its influence is worth studying.
Sleep deprivation is a subject of much researches because nowadays people usually do not get enough sleep due to work schedules and a dynamic lifestyle. That is why it is necessary to know its possible outcomes. Daviaux, Mignardot, Cornu, and Deschamps (2014), for example, conducted research aimed at finding how total sleep deprivation affects the perception of action capabilities. They divided twenty-four participants, men and women of nearly the same age and physical indices, into two groups.
People from the first group stayed awake for 24 hours in the laboratory while the second one was the control group. The experimental task was to define the maximum height of stepping over the bar by adding 2.5 cm at a time. It had two parts: assessing one’s possibility to perform the task and actually doing it. The results have proved that sleep deprivation has a deleterious impact on assessing situations that might have dangerous outcomes and lead to inattentiveness (Daviaux et al., 2014).
One more similar research was carried out by Dąbrowski, Ziemba, Tomczak, and Mikulski (2012) for the purpose of investigating the effects of 36 hours without sleep combined with 20 hours of intermittent exercise. The authors have chosen eleven healthy men of nearly the same age, height, body mass, and body mass index. Measurements were made at the beginning of the experiment, after 24 and 36 hours. What is special about the study is that the participants were asked to stay active by doing moderate physical exercises.
The results have shown that long-lasting sleep deprivation if combined with physical activities, leads to a drop in heart rate, degradation of motion coordination, and shooting performance but does not influence handgrip sensitivity and psychomotor performance (Dąbrowski et al., 2012).
Studying human physical performance under the conditions of partial or long sleep deprivation is of extreme significance if adapted to the military environment because, in fact, these are the conditions soldiers live in during the times of warfare. The results of both types of research mentioned above are important as they demonstrate that not enough sleep can become the reason of thoughtless behavior as the ability to assess potential danger decreases. Moreover, less or no sleep leads to detraction and degradation of motion coordination that can have lethal outcomes in the case of shooting and/or overt acts of war.
However, soldiers can and should be trained to resist sleep deprivation because it is one way of making them more productive and the overall results of military missions positive. Together with that, it can help save people’s lives and thus guarantee that the armed forces are strong and can hold the front. The possible psychological costs of training such as changes in the mood with the shift to negativity and sleepiness (Mário & Teresa, 2013) are nothing as compared to the benefit of being alive and surviving in the military environment. What is more, when trained, soldiers feel less influence of sleep deprivation on attention and physical performance, unlike the ones who are not adapted.
References
Dąbrowski, J., Ziemba, A., Tomczak, A., & Mikulski, T. (2012). Physical performance of healthy men exposed to long exercise and sleep deprivation. Medicine Sportiva, 16(1), 6-11. Web.
Daviaux, Y., Mignardot, J. B., Cornu, C., & Deschamps, T. (2014). Effects of total sleep deprivation on the perception of action capabilities. Experimental Brain Research, 232(7), 2243-2253. Web.
Mário, C., & Teresa, P. (2013). Partial sleep deprivation in Portuguese Navy militaries. Sleep Medicine, 14(1), e197. Web.