I characterize my life around the decades I have lived through. I was born in the last year of the 60’s, I grew up in the 70’s and my young fertile mind gained the majority of its education in the 80’s. Like all kids in the 80’s most of my education came from the playground and the silver screen. It was movies that gave me the notion that successful people didn’t have to sleep. In fact if you did sleep you were hindering your progress, hamstringing your earning and harpooning your career trajectory. One movie from the 1980s that popularized the idea of lack of sleep being a tool for a successful life was "Wall Street" (1987), in which the character Gordon Gekko famously says, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." This concept of success at any cost was promoted by "Working Girl" (1988), in which the main character, Tess McGill, is shown to be an extremely hardworking and dedicated employee who frequently stays up all night working on projects. Looking back I should have seen the insanity of the not sleeping concept reflected in the absurdity of their hair styles. (Needless to say the 80’s has a lot to answer for)
Before we get into the blog article I will start with my disclaimer. Under no circumstance do I claim to be an expert. I am not preaching that my way is gospel and must be religiously followed. I write these articles to my 20 year old self after 50 plus years of experience about what I have discovered and what I wish I knew earlier in my life. While I have a few university qualifications hanging on my wall and have taught, approximately 5000 mathematics and science students over my 32 year career, none of what I am presenting in this article is peer reviewed or subjected to the rigours of scientific methodology. This is just a reflection of what I have discovered going from a poor sleeper with questionable performance to a good (ish) sleeper who can still swim 1:15 hundreds in the pool, ride just over the hour for a 40k and run 4 minute kilometres in my mid 50’s. With that disclaimer and shameless brag out of the way, I present to you the importance of sleep in increasing the performance of an endurance athlete.
Why talk about sleep?
While Gordon Gekko claimed that he would sleep when he was dead I think we all know that Gordon was probably sentencing himself to an early eternal slumber. The research clearly states that sleep plays a crucial role in our daily lives, yet most of us take it for granted. It's something that we spend a third of our lives doing, yet we hardly pause to consider what it is or why it's so important. In this blog, I wish to explore the basics of sleep, what it does for our performance as endurance athletes, what are the stages of sleep that we need to be aware of, and what happens when we don't get enough sleep.
What is Sleep?
Sleep is a state of reduced consciousness that occurs naturally in our bodies. It's an active process that our bodies go through to tick the 3R boxes of recovery (regenerate, repair, and rejuvenate). During sleep, our bodies take care of critical functions such as synthesizing proteins, processing memory, and repairing any cellular damage that occurred during the day. The harder we train, the harder we should be sleeping! But unfortunately this relationship is never linear.
The Stages of Sleep
Let us get a little scientific for a minute (paragraph) and look at sleep. Sleep has multiple phases but for this article I will divide it into two main stages, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and Non-REM Sleep. Non-REM sleep is further divided into three stages. The first stage of non-REM sleep is light sleep, followed by deep sleep stages 2 and 3. During REM sleep, our brains are highly active, and our eyes move rapidly behind our eyelids. This is also the stage where we tend to have vivid dreams. All of which we don’t really care about because we are asleep when they happen and don’t really know they have happened. Let us instead skip to next section of this article.
What Happens When You Don’t Get Enough Sleep?
Studies have shown that a lack of sleep can have significant consequences. Specifically, not getting enough REM sleep or deep (N3) sleep can lead to a host of problems. Sleep deprivation can lead to daytime fatigue (too tired to get on the bike), depression (lacking motivation to get on the bike), irritability (annoyed with the world, you blow off the bike and hit the local pub instead), and cognitive impairments such as memory and concentration issues (forgot where you put your bike). Chronic sleep deprivation has also been linked to an increased risk of some performance health issues such as obesity (best described as skinny fat man disorder for endurance athletes), diabetes (a developing problem in our world of high fructose gel consumption), and heart disease (another real problem considering the stress we already put our hearts under). At this stage you need to step back and seriously assess if you are getting enough sleep and is that sleep you are getting quality sleep.
Major Causes of Poor Sleep
Many factors can contribute to poor sleep quality. Some of these include stress, anxiety, depression, alcohol consumption and the one that we overlook which is overtraining. It's essential to identify the primary cause(s) of poor sleep to address them effectively.
Remedies to Get Better Sleep
There's no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to improving sleep quality. However, several steps can be taken to promote better sleep:
1. Have a consistent sleep schedule
2. Create a relaxing sleep environment
3. No caffeine long before bed. I stop caffeine input at high noon.
4. Reduce alcohol consumption.
5. Work out how long before bed you need to stop exercising. Think of yourself as a wheel that needs time to spin down before it stops completely. Doing an FTP session and then hopping into bed will not result in good sleep.
6. Finally – bin the relationship between your phone and bed. Set some boundaries.
I personally do meditation before bed which includes deep breathing to reduce stress. Stress is the leading cause of reduced sleep quality. Just because you turned the light off to go to bed, it doesn’t mean you turned your brain off.
Final take away
Adequate sleep plays a crucial role in increasing performance for endurance athletes. It not only helps to improve physical and mental recovery but also allows the body to repair and rebuild itself, ensuring that you as an athletes can perform at your peak level. Having a bad sleep every now and again is not going to break the bank but once you step into sleep deprivation you are opening up a whole host of negative effects. These include decreased reaction time, increased injury risk, and impaired cognitive function. Thus, it is essential for you as an endurance athletes to prioritize quality sleep to achieve your goals. Finally I beg that you take sleep as seriously as you do your long run or your nutrition race plan because with consistent and proper sleep, you will actually improve your performance much more than buying the latest tech on the market. Think of sleep as free speed.
Thanks for reading.
Sean