Arsenal will head into the upcoming 2025/26 season hoping they have more favourable luck with injuries than they had during the previous campaign.
Several key players missed a significant portion of the season with fitness issues, scuppering the club’s hopes of ending their five-year spell without winning major silverware.
The Gunners have traditionally been at the forefront of utilising the latest sports science techniques to inform their training programmes to ensure players remain in prime condition.
Former manager Arsene Wenger introduced a wide range of innovative measures at the club, many of which are still used by the current coaching staff.
Intriguingly, Wenger questioned whether recovery treatments such as cryotherapy actually work in 2017 after the club installed an extreme-cold chamber at their training ground.
However, he was a major advocate of the importance of sleep for athlete recovery, mirroring the mindset of former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
The legendary pair were renowned for stressing the importance of quality sleep and going to extreme lengths to ensure their players took their rest and recovery seriously.
Their stance has been backed up by an extensive body of research, which shows that sleep deprivation can significantly impact athletic performance and hinder recovery processes.
Simba Sleep, a company renowned for its Hybrid® mattress king size and other innovative products, has conducted studies into the influence sleep has on performance.
Their efforts have informed the design of their products to ensure that everyone can achieve peak performance, both physically and mentally.
Lisa Artis, the deputy chief executive officer of Simba’s charity partner, The Sleep Charity, says that quality rest is a non-negotiable element for top-class athletes.
“Sleep is a necessity for physical, mental and emotional wellbeing,” Artis said. “Athletes who optimise their sleep see significant improvements in performance, recovery and injury prevention.
“A lack of sleep increases levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can negatively affect muscle recovery and endurance. Ensuring adequate rest is just as important as training itself.”
Arsenal Women’s star Beth Mead supported that stance following her return to action in October 2023 after a lengthy spell on the sidelines with an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
Mead embraced the use of innovative technology to support her recovery by wearing a fitness-tracking wearable device which monitored her overall health.
Sleep was one of the primary elements Mead focused on during her recovery and she believes this helped to speed up her return to competitive action.
“We say that the best form of recovery is sleep,” Mead told The Athletic. “I think having a good night’s sleep helped me heal quicker – or at least that was my mindset.
“Sleep is probably my biggest one. I like to know how much I have slept, but I like to see my strain after training sessions, to correlate how I felt personally to what the data says. Plus, I like to look at my stress levels throughout the week.”
Arsenal’s male players would be well-advised to take inspiration from Mead’s comments as they strive to end the club’s lengthy wait for silverware.
Manager Mikel Arteta is under pressure to deliver this season having been heavily backed by the board and he can ill-afford to lose key players to injury.
The Gunners have finished runners-up in the Premier League in each of the last three seasons, but better luck with injuries could help them get over the line this time around.
