High Quality Sleep

Sleep is arguably the most important thing you can focus on to improve your health, quality of life, and athletic performance. It will take time, energy, and focus to execute a sleep pattern that sets you up for success, so don’t be surprised when you have to put a little work into getting a good night’s rest. Once you automate good sleep habits though, it will become more natural the more you practice.

Sleep accomplishes two things - neurological and physiological rejuvenation. All day our bodies and brains accumulate fatigue in the form of oxidation, inflammation, and energy depletion. The increased anabolic hormone response during sleep hours makes it a potent muscle recovery environment. Although a resting state of the muscle is all that’s required to promote muscle recovery, the increase in growth hormone and testosterone helps expedite the recovery process during sleep. More importantly, our brain and nervous system have a chance to “clean up” waste, reorganize, and rejuvenate when we sleep. Sleep is the only time of the day that our conscious brain shuts off for such a length of time. The difference in mental acuity of a good vs bad night’s rest is much more significant than most people realize.

A good sleep routine begins with setting the intention and thinking about all of the things you would need to execute for a good rhythm and routine for your sleep. Begin thinking about how many hours you plan to get per night. 7-9 hours is the most general recommendation, and 10-12 hours may be necessary when an athlete is in very heavy training and/or has high-life stress. Once you plan how many hours of sleep you are targeting, think about when your sleep and wake times would need to be. It is more important to have your sleep time nailed down so you can backtrack from there. When you set your sleep time, you’ll need some buffer time beforehand to prepare effectively.

If you know the hour you should be falling asleep, the best thing you can do to initiate sleep is to completely eliminate your exposure to real and artificial light. Your bedroom should be as dark as possible at least one hour before you plan to fall asleep. When our eyes are exposed to any light, it communicates to the body that it is daytime and inhibits melatonin secretion, therefore, keeping us more alert and awake no matter what time it is. I do not recommend taking melatonin supplements, as it is a bandaid for poor sleep hygiene. I do recommend keeping your room as dark as possible, especially in the hour before sleep. You will also want to enter a calm parasympathetic state when in your dark room before sleeping, so you can meditate, visualize, or read a book to fall asleep. It should be obvious, but avoid social media, TV, or anything else that may be too stimulating and keep you awake. If you are reading, it may be better to read on your phone with the brightness all the way dim, with blue light eliminated, and with black pages. This emits the least amount of light and allows you to read in a calm state. Reading a normal book would require a brighter reading light and may not help initiate sleep.

Some other things you can do to make sure you are maximizing your sleep quality and quantity are achieving adequate energy availability and hydration throughout the day. If you fall short on calories by too much during a day (>500cal deficit), there is a chance that your body will wake you up shortly after sleep or sometimes during the night due to hunger. Respecting your energy needs with increased training and having consistently balanced meals throughout the day will help with this issue. Make sure that your last meal before sleep contains all of the macronutrients so your body has the resources it needs to repair and rebuild itself during sleep. This meal should be ideally a couple hours before you sleep time so your body has time to digest it before bed. As far as hydration goes, it is more than just drinking water. Athletes lose lots of fluid and electrolytes (mainly sodium) in training and during the day. Drinking back your fluid losses after training and consuming drinks/meals that contain sodium will help you restore water balance in the body. The electrolytes are necessary for adequate hydration as they make the body retain the water you drink. Getting ahead of things by hydrating throughout the day helps you go to sleep hydrated and ensures you do not have to drink high volumes of fluid before going to bed. Drinking too close to bed would disturb your sleep as it would make you have to get up several times during the night to use the bathroom.

Some other things you can do for high-quality sleep no matter where you go are using a sleep mask and earplugs. Need a nap in the middle of the day while traveling? Break out your eyemask to completely eliminate light, and experience how much faster your body goes into sleep mode. An eye mask can be used for naps anywhere or you can use it before bed to make sure that you eliminate every last sliver of light. Ear plugs are also helpful as they eliminate auditory stimuli. Earplugs will help reduce the number of times that you wake up during the night due to unforeseen circumstances (dog barking, people being loud, neighbors, traffic noise, etc.).

Lastly, your bedroom temperature should be on the cool side. Your body already cools itself down during sleep as it lowers its metabolic rate to be more energy efficient during sleep. Keeping your bedroom cool is easier on the body since it does not have to thermoregulate as much. Somewhere between 65-70*F is a good place to start.

Some people struggle with falling asleep with racing thoughts. Right before sleep is not the time to solve any problems, so I recommend working on putting whatever it is on your mind to the side to work on with a fresh mind tomorrow. Our neurons in our brains wire and recover during sleep, so the chances are that the problems you have in your head before falling asleep may just get solved during the night while you sleep. Have trust that you will wake up the next morning with a higher capacity to deal with whatever is on your mind.

SHORT SUMMARY:

Good sleep begins with establishing your goal sleep and wake time (and goal for total duration of sleep).

Make your bedroom as dark as possible, eliminating ALL light at least one hour before bed.

Eliminate all noxious stimuli with earplugs and eye masks, remove the TV & phone, and shut doors.

Create a cool environment by lowering the temperature of your bedroom to 65-70*.

Calm your mind, enter a parasympathetic state and reduce anxiety by using breathing, visualization, meditation, reading, or stretching before sleep.

Stick to your sleep wake schedule. The body has an internal clock that aligns with sunrise and sunset (exposure to light), so consistency is key to automate these sleep wake times!