You’re a passionate athlete who is beyond talented. You’re at the top of your game, and you’ve worked hard to get there. But you’re faced with irregular schedules, plenty of travel and jet lag, and hotel stays. How on earth do you ensure you get enough high-quality sleep?
The truth is, you can be exceptionally talented and give your all to your sport, but if you’re not getting healthy sleep, your performance, recovery, and susceptibility to an injury can be significantly impacted.
While poor sleep habits and various sleep disorders affect people globally, when it comes to athletes specifically, the negative impact is tenfold. Poor sleep and bad sleeping habits affect athletic performance in terms of strength, speed, decision-making abilities, and even creativity.
It also increases the risk of injury when you’re on the field and can extend recovery time.
Lastly, low quality and lack of sleep can have far-reaching effects on an athlete’s mental health and wellbeing, often leading to stress, mood disturbances, and lack of confidence.
As you can imagine, all these aspects of an athlete’s life affect how you perform on the field. And yet so many sports teams fail to pay attention to sleep as an integral part of their sports regimen.
Keep reading to find out exactly what happens when we sleep, why athletes need high-quality sleep, and why sports coaches and clubs should prioritise sleep therapy.
What happens when we sleep
When we sleep, our bodies go through a series of processes and changes to ensure that we get the rest we need for our overall health. Almost every part of our body and brain experiences some sort of change during this process.
Sleep gives our bodies and brains the break they need to slow down and do what they need to recover, promoting better physical and mental performance.
Research shows that, from a biological perspective, it reinforces our cardiovascular and immune systems, and regulates our metabolism. These are vitally important for health, recovery time and peak performance.
What happens when we don’t sleep, it is disordered, or we have poor sleeping habits is that these fundamental processes essentially short-circuit. And as discussed above, this results in issues with mental processes, concentration, energy levels, physical performance, and mood.
As sleep specialists with extensive experience, we could speak for days about the physical and emotional changes that happen within our bodies while we sleep. However, we’ve kept it short here so that we can move on to why sleep is important for athletes specifically.
Why athletes need better sleep and its benefits
Athletes are required to function at their best, and in order to function at their best, every aspect of both their physical and mental state needs to be in tip-top shape. Sleep is a key component to feeling restored and functioning optimally.
The physical aspect
When we sleep, we allow our hearts to rest, and our cells and tissue repair during this time. This is when our bodies recover from physical exertion and injury. So, if you’ve had a tough day in the gym, you’ll need high-quality sleep for your body to recover so you can perform well the next day. And, if you have an injury, you need sleep for it to heal.
As an athlete, you’ll know that cardiovascular health is critical to performing well and that sleep, coupled with regular physical exercise, promotes cardiovascular health.
During sleep, our bodies produce hormones that help fight off infection and boost our immune system. As an athlete, the last thing you want is to be sick in bed. That’s why sleep health is so important to your physical health.
The mental aspect
The impact that sleep has on our mental state is also of high importance for athletes. Mental fitness is paramount to your performance, just as much as physical fitness is.
Sleep helps us retain and consolidate memories, especially new ones. When we learn new techniques or plays, our sleep is what ingrains them in our memories.
Additionally, sleep is important for cognitive processing, and a lack of sleep has been proven to result in a decline in this area which can affect our ability to make fast decisions and adapt to new situations.
From a mental health perspective, athletes need high-quality sleep to improve their overall mood and resilience and decrease the risk of anxiety and depression.
In summary, poor sleep health results in inhibited physical ability, including strength and speed, decreased accuracy, getting tired faster, lowered reaction times, and a much higher risk of injury.
How athletes can get better sleep
It’s important that athletes seek professional help in the form of holistic sleep coaching, as it takes an expert to give you the individual insight you need, based on your specific lifestyle and body chemistry.
Here are a few of those insights ensuring the best possible outcome:
- Ensure the environment you’re in is optimised for better sleep. You need a dark and cool space with as little noise as possible to get a good night’s sleep. We know that, as an athlete, this isn’t always possible to achieve, and we have some other tricks up our sleeves to help you with this, but it’s worth keeping this point in mind.
- Avoid alcohol and caffeine close to bedtime as this can make it hard to fall asleep and disturb your sleep.
- As much as possible, try reducing your screen time before bed.
- If you have tried falling asleep for over 20 minutes and have seen no success, get out of bed and do a quiet activity to help you relax and feel sleepy, then go back to bed.
- Avoid overtraining and, instead, stick to a consistent training schedule.
- Don’t take naps that are longer than an hour.
Why athletes need specialist sleep therapy
Specialist sleep therapy, also called holistic sleep coaching, involves many different facets, and is an in-depth science, provided by qualified specialists. While many claim to be sleep experts, they often aren’t backed by the qualifications and training that are needed to enact real change in athletes’ lives to ensure better sleep is achieved.
Athletes need specialist sleep therapy because their sleeping routines are often upended by hectic schedules, training, travel, overexertion, and jet lag.
Practice schedules do not cease between competitive events, thus top athletes will need proper sleep after intensive training sessions, as well as before and after the event. More so if the event requires long distance travel, with jet lag playing a major part in decreased performance.
Specialist sleep support combines clinical psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), extensive clinical experience, and advanced training in sleep disorders to address every aspect of an athlete’s health and wellbeing.
Holistic sleep coaching includes providing one-on-one support to each individual athlete on a team to help them overcome their sleep barriers. Also, the ability to assess an athlete’s sleep health quickly and carry out continuous monitoring is something that many of those who claim to be ‘sleep specialists’ don’t provide.
The Sleep Athletic Advantage
As mentioned before, there are many people who claim to be sleep specialists out there. However, because sleep therapy is still an unregulated specialism, it’s hard to figure out who is the real deal and who isn’t.
What we can tell you about Sleep Athletic is that we are led by Dr. Chris James, who is a fully-qualified and highly-experienced clinical psychologist with over 15 years of experience helping a broad range of people – including world-renowned athletes – overcome sleep disorders and difficulties.
His clinical background and experience has enabled him to develop a quick and effective way of screening the sleep health of athletes, including identifying any symptoms of sleep disorders (i.e. clinical/medical issues).
The Sleep Athletic team also offers bespoke one-on-one coaching for squads and staff requiring sleep support to help them optimise their sleep and reach optimal performance levels. These strategies are specifically tailored for each individual. Lastly, we provide sleep training workshops for both sports teams and staff on sleep hygiene and proper strategies for dealing with the sleep disruptions that being a sportsperson naturally entails.
If you are interested in working with Sleep Athletic, either as an athlete or a coach, contact us via our website for a free consultation.
