Optimizing Sleep

By Ken Mierke

According to the National Sleep Foundation sleep deprivation is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States. Inadequate sleep accounts for an enormous number of accidents and lost productivity each year, totaling more than $30 billion. Certainly if the mostly sedentary population suffers severely from inadequate sleep, this is an issue hard training athletes should take seriously. Athletes need sleep to recover and repair tissues and we tend to sleep less because training overfills our already busy days.

As coaches, we study how to best combine exercise frequency, intensity, and mode to address our athlete's specific limiters and bring them to race day ready to perform to their potential. Unfortunately, to most coaches and athletes, rest is a passive process. I always try to help my athletes to understand that recovery is a process they need to attack proactively. A major part of that is getting enough sleep.

One of my top athletes made a point of getting thirty minutes per night additional sleep this year. He set a bedtime for himself and made every possible arrangement to improve the quality of his sleep. I believe that this was one key component of his breakthrough season. When you divide his increased income by thirty minutes per night, he received a pretty good hourly wage for lying in bed.

The first step to improving quality of sleep is making sure the athlete gets enough hours of sleep. Individuals vary considerably on sleep requirements, but I bet almost every athlete we coach would benefit from a few additional minutes of sleep.

Many of my athletes would be willing to train one additional hour per day, but cannot find time for an additional thirty minutes of sleep per day. You do the math on that one.

Caffeine: Even as a Starbucks junkie, I understand that caffeine can disrupt sleep. Caffeine's half-life in the bloodstream is between three and seven hours (depending on age and level of caffeine use - coffee junkies will metabolize caffeine faster), probably far longer than most people would estimate. I personally have moved my own 5:00 PM caffeine deadline back to 4:00 PM and my sleep has benefited. That said, caffeine's effect on sleep patterns is a very individual response and your friends who say "Coffee doesn't keep me from sleeping" are probably right.

Consistent Sleep Patterns: Instruct your athletes to go to bed and rise at the same hour every day. At one time I woke up at 4:00 AM for a Tuesday/Thursday personal training client. (Yes, she paid 25% extra to meet that early.) For several months keeping this schedule destroyed me. I was getting up at 6:00 AM the other days, but to me 4:00 AM is very late at night, not early morning, and I could not get to bed early enough to make the schedule work. I read that sleep experts recommend waking within an hour of the same time every day and started getting up at 5:00 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Everything clicked and my training as well as my work productivity soared.

Set a bedtime and respect it as you would a workout. None of us would let a priority workout get squeezed out by any but our most important projects, but we do go to bed late the night before a priority workout and reduce its effectiveness.

Bedroom Temperature: Research shows that temperature for sleeping is a significant factor that varies widely among individuals. Fortunately it also shows that the temperature that produces optimal sleep patterns correlates very well with personal comfort. We sleep best at the temperature that feels most comfortable.

Avoid Alcohol: While alcohol near bedtime may be relaxing and even help you get to sleep, it disrupts sleep patterns and negatively affects quality of sleep.

Time the Evening Meal: This presents quite a challenge for athletes, but sleep patterns are ideal if the evening meal is consumed at least three hours before bedtime. If this is not possible, one solution is dividing the evening meal and consuming half before the workout. The lighter dinner is likely to be less disruptive to sleep patterns. Obviously this isn't an option before very high intensity workouts.

Develop Relaxing Bedtime Rituals: Developing patterns of nighttime rituals helps us fall asleep sooner after going to bed. Hot baths, reading, and a decaffeinated warm drink seem to be most effective.

Bedroom Just For Sleeping: Avoid doing work or other activities in the bedroom as much as is practical. If the bedroom is for sleeping only, you are likely to fall asleep sooner after going to bed.

Lights Out: While there is considerable individual variability, most people sleep their best in a very dark sleep environment. Even a short, bright light may dramatically disrupt sleep patterns, so use a nightlight in the bathroom so that when you need to use it during the night you won't have to turn a bright light on.

Especially during their heaviest periods of training, emphasize to your clients how critical sleep is to effective workouts and to recovery. Using the guidelines above, help them make plans that enable them to optimize sleep. Research shows that reducing a sleep deficit leads to greater productivity, even with as little as fifteen additional minutes of sleep per night.

Suggested Readings: Dement, William C. M.D. Ph.D., The Promise of Sleep, Dell Publishing, 1999