How to Sleep Like an Olympic Athlete (You Should)

The almost superhuman feats of Olympic athletes are the result of years of meticulous training and preparation. But one aspect is often overlooked – the way they sleep. In fact, few manage to get the look they need

On the day of his flight to the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Irish artistic gymnast Rhys McClenaghan woke up at 4.30am to fit in a training session, hoping to get tired. In a bid to beat jet lag, he planned to sleep only for the first half of the 16-hour flight, hoping his body clock would be set to the new time zone – eight hours ahead of Dublin – when he landed.

“My trainer says he should be able to wake me up in the middle of the night and I should be able to do a routine right away,” McClenaghan said in a video he posted to YouTube at the time. It seems that preparing to perform at any moment, even with an insufficient amount of sleep, is only part of the necessary groundwork before the historic sports competition.

Most Olympic athletes undergo years, if not decades, of punishing exercise and conditioning regimens as they prepare to compete at the pinnacle of their sport.

However, sleep is an essential and often overlooked part of how one performs in the Games.

It is known that sleep is essential for brain and body. Not getting enough of it can contribute to poor mental and physical health. And while we all feel the effects of a bad night’s sleep, in the world of elite sport – where shaving fractions of a second off a time or making micrometers of adjustment can mean the difference between victory or defeat – it can make a world of difference. the difference. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example, a 1% improvement it meant a gold medal for the competitor who finished fourth in the women’s 400m swim, 400m track and women’s road race. It would have also earned the fourth-place sprinter a silver medal in the men’s 100m.

Other studies have shown that elite athletes who have their sleep restricted to four hours a night for three nights suffer from a decline in joint coordination and are unable to jump as high as they can with more than seven hours of sleep in night.

“If you talk about a pyramid, it is [sleep] the base, or foundation of a building,” says Matthew Crawley, assistant strength and conditioning coach and sports scientist for the Dallas Stars, and adjunct professor at Canisius University, in Buffalo, New York. “It’s fascinating — when the body is recovering. during sleep, the human growth hormone is released, and emotions are regulated… All these are complex physiological processes in the body that are overlooked”.

Negative effects sleep deprivation on athletic performance includes reaction time, accuracy, strength, and endurance, as well as cognitive functions such as decision-making and judgment. But this can vary between sports and individuals – for example with something like archery, it affects fine motor skills, reaction time and decision-making, compared to something like a 100m sprint, where they will feel the effects in their speed, power and endurance. .

However, there is currently limited research on how specific sports affect sleep one study showed that individual athletes went to bed earlierwoke up earlier and got less sleep than the team athletes. This can be affected by training demands – for example, sports such as swimming and triathlon can require multiple training sessions per day, which in turn can disrupt sleep quality.

If you asked me to get up at 6am to go to the gym, I would politely laugh in your face. The only thing I like to get up in the morning is the kettle full of boiling water for my tea. While I struggle to exercise first thing in the morning, letting my body fully wake up, some people feel more sluggish in the evening. And there is some science behind it, like being a night owl or morning larynx affects sports performance. (Find out more about best time of day to exercise.)

Our body’s internal clock ticks approximately every 24 hours. This cycle helps to harmonize our sleep cues with the environment, such as the hours of darkness, when we eat or when we are physically active. This cycle is called ours circadian rhythm.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, found that an athlete’s performance can also be different depending on their circadian rhythmafter 20 female field hockey players completed a multi-phase fitness test (also known as the BLEEP test) in six hours of the day, between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Larks peaked at 12:00 p.m., midges peaked just before 4:00 p.m., and owls peaked just before 8:00 p.m., and there was a 26% difference between their best and worst times. Ultimately, the results show how determining an athlete’s circadian pattern will help them and their team understand when they perform best.

Crawley also mentions the process known as homeostatic induction of sleep that works simultaneously with the circadian rhythm, increasing during the day to leave us feeling sleepy at night. “Without sleep, it can be challenging for the body to regulate metabolism, immunity, neurological function, cognitive function, emotional and physical health,” he says.

Although it is unlikely that official competitions will ever change because an individual athlete may perform best at a certain time of day, Crawley believes that customizing training and sleep routines to an athlete’s circadian rhythm could “change the future of training”.

While sleep diaries and questionnaires can also be effective for keeping track of how you feel you’ve slept, wearable fitness devices are growing in popularity as they provide concrete data on sleep quantity and quality. They track the stages of sleep – REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM (which is further disaggregated in the stage of light, deeper and deeper sleep) – as well as the duration and latency of sleep (how long it takes you to fall asleep). Analyzing the measurements allows sleep experts to gain insight into sleep patterns and identify areas where athletes can improve their sleep hygiene.

However, this may not work for all athletessome of whom may feel more stressed by the numbers each morning, Crawley says. “Some may not look at it the night before or the day of a competition as it can affect their psychological preparation, for example if they only managed six hours of sleep the night before, but they know they probably have need at least seven or eight to feel good enough to perform,” says Crawley.

New research is showing that sleep hygiene routines are an effective way for athletes to regulate their sleep and ensure they get enough sleep. top priority. However, it takes commitment – ​​for example, waking up at the same time every day, establishing a sleep routine, limiting caffeine and avoiding blue light from electronic devices. McClenaghan, for example, wears glasses with red lenses to block blue light while traveling. (Intriguingly, while exposure to blue light before bed can affect sleep quality, at other times it can improves reaction time and alertnesswhich can be useful in some sports.)

“Understanding their upcoming schedule is important – what does the training week look like? When is the competition?” says Crawley. “Can they go to bed a little earlier, or focus on getting sunlight in the morning before they travel?” Morning sunlight helps regulate the circadian rhythm, from increasing our serotonin levels and on the other hand suppressing melatonin (a a natural hormone that gets up at night to help control how and when you sleep).

A new concept of “bank sleep” (sleeping longer the night before a sleep-deprived or interrupted night) has also been suggested to improve athletic performance. Napping has also been shown to have positive effects on sports performance – a quick 30 or 90 minutes of shut-eye has been shown to improve alertness AND reduce sports-related fatigue.

While it may not be the most helpful for those who struggle to sleep, napping can be used to supplement a night of bad sleepor to combat “daytime sleepiness.” In fact, Team GB invested in sleeping pods for the Paris 2024 Games to help optimize sleep quantity and quality for athletes in a high-pressure and unfamiliar environment.

I think my days of scrolling through my phone before bed are over, because if moaning about how badly I slept the night before was an Olympic sport, I’d definitely have a gold medal.

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