THE EFFECTS OF RELAXATION EXERCISES ON SLEEP QUALITY AND CONTENT OF ATHLETE'S DREAMS AT NIGHT BEFORE THE COMPETITION

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of relaxation exercises on sleep quality and dream content on the night before the competition in female football players. The subjects of this study were 12 female athletes (Mage=22) who were a member of football team in university of Tehran in 2016. They were purposefully selected and they were randomly divided into the control group (N=6) and experimental group (N=6) for the participation in a design of this study with pre-test, post-test. The instrument of this study was included Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Sherdel's dream content analytic scale, and Winter and Martin's relaxation program. The intervention lasted 2 weeks in 14 sessions (30 minutes per night). The collected data were analyzed by independent t-test and Mann-Whitney U test (α<0.05). The results of this study showed that relaxation exercises had a significant effect on sleep quality in athletes except good sleep components, sleep latency, the use of sleeping drugs, and daytime dysfunction on the night before the competition (P=0.024). Also, relaxation exercises had no significant effect on dream content and its components on the night before the competition athletes (P=0.643). Therefore, it seems that the application of this intervention can be useful to improve athletes' sleep quality in competition training camps.