Good sleep is vital to any fitness training programme and could be consider the best performance enhancing drug. When your training hard, you need to recover harder. To becoming an Olympic-caliber athlete, it takes a calculated approach to sleep to ensure optimal performance both mentally (i.e. concentration and focus) and physically (i.e. muscle recovery and growth).
The sleep techniques used by world-class athletes can also be good for regular folks, as shared by their sleep coaches (yes, that is a real job) and the athletes themselves.
- Optimum Sleep Environment – That means making your environment the most comfortable as possible for you. First, looked at environmental factors for the room, for example, light, temperature, and noise. Blackout curtains are used when athletes visit hotels (especially helpful for daytime naps). Temperature-wise, cool is better than warm. You need to have some kind of accurate control, like a thermostat, or have things like extra blankets so you can control the temperature during the night.
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Noise Control – Noise is another factor that can have an impact on sleep. With noise, what most people need to know is that it’s the intrusive noise events, like doors banging, that are the most disruptive for peoples’ sleep. Their solution involves masking the intrusive sounds with background noise, using fan or a sound machine.
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Comfortable Beds – With the Olympic program, the training rooms originally had twin beds, which you can imagine for some athletes could be a problem. So out went the tiny twins and in came full size mattresses with extra pillows (some of which were hypoallergenic), cotton sheets, and blankets – all an easy fix for athletes who were simply too big for their own beds.
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Getting the right amount of shut eye – Eight hours of sleep is the standard. Athletes should get between seven and nine hours of sleep. More if your body calls for it. That means planning what time you have to wake up and working backwards on what time you need to go to bed.
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Using the power nap – A lot of athletes incorporate short naps into their routine particularly before an event to wake up feeling energised and ready to perform. Also, naps are used straight after tough training sessions for muscle recovery and growth. A power nap is usually 15-30 minutes long. Any longer and you’ll wake up groggy, unless it’s a full 90 minutes — but then it will interfere with your ability to sleep at night. The power nap is kind of a short restoration period.
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Taking natural sleep supplements – Sometimes travelling athletes experience jet lag after crossing multiple time zones to an event or feel the pressure of pre-competition jitters, and getting good sleep isn’t an option. Some athletes use natural sleep aids which include taking valerian root, chamomile, or melatonin.
If you follow these sleep techniques, you’ll be sleeping like an Olympian in no time!