Pillars of Success - Sleep
I’d like to share a few concepts of things I’ve found generate reliable success in endurance sports. Many times we kind of skip over or try to “hack” things. I’d encourage you to think about how you can improve in these areas. I’ll only highlight one at a time, but give it some thought.
Sleep
Sleep is probably the biggest recovery aid you can use, legal or otherwise. Which is why I focus so much on it with athletes . The conversations we have around their challenges are often really illuminating, and help me prescribe more effective training, as well as give us fantastic points we can work on to help them improve their lives.
The biggest benefits I see from a coaching standpoint include:
Mental clarity
Emotional balance and resilience
Higher metabolism and weight loss
Improved immune response
Improved ability to absorb training
Sleep trackers like Whoop are really useful to close the feedback loop and let us look at lifestyle issues that are limiters, but there’s plenty of “low-tech” solutions out there.
Start by improving your sleep hygiene, no, this isn’t about being clean when you fall asleep, although a warm shower before bed can really help! Things to work on include:
Consistent time to bed- this will in turn create a consistent time to wake up
No electronic devices in the bedroom, especially ones with any notifications. At the very least, set up Do Not Disturb.
A dark sleeping space is key. The research around this is very surprising at how much a small light can keep someone in light sleep.
White noise, either a fan or a machine
Room temperature 60-64 F .
Reach out to me and lets chat about small habit changes we can make for big improvements.
