Most people have, at some point, suffered from jet lag. It’s horrible - eyes popping open, wide awake in the middle of the night, and daytime drowsiness to the point where you can barely keep your eyes open. It is unpleasant, but more to the point, in detriment to your performance as an athlete (or a coach). In this blog post, I’ll cover off what jet lag is and why it happens, and a plan to kick it as as fast as possible.
My last post, Sleep Plans for Powerlifters, was targeted at sleeping regularly in your home time zone. This post is specific to travel - how to kick jet lag as quickly as possible. It’s written with a bent towards competitive athletes, but the same principles apply whether you’re traveling to lift, traveling to coach, or even traveling for work or a holiday.
Note that the advice in this blog post is aimed specifically at adjusting to a new time zone. If you regularly have trouble sleeping in your home time zone, consider a sleep plan, or seeing a medical professional.
Circadian Rhythm
I know I promised to explain what jet lag is and why it happens, but a thorough understanding of how to beat it comes from understanding the underlying mechanisms. If you don’t care about any of this stuff, and just want to know what to do, skip straight to the last section.
Your circadian (circa- about, dian - day) rhythm is the internal clock which dictates the way your body behaves during parts of the day. This rhythm is why you wake up at around the same time most days (even if you don’t set an alarm), why you get sleepy in the evenings, and even why you get hungry at particular times. It also regulates some more obscure biological processes, like tiny variations in your core body temperature.
One of the curious points about your circadian rhythm is that it isn’t 24 hours long - for most people it’s around 24 hours and 15 minutes (though I believe free running periods of up to 27 hours have been observed). Each day, you need to expose yourself to a series of zeitgebers to keep your internal clock in sync with actual days. Zeitgeber is a German word meaning syncroniser or time giver, and in this context it means the external signals the time of day to your body. The most common natural zeitgebers are the light and heat from the rising sun, signalling the morning (which is why you’ll often wake up at night if your room gets too warm).
What’s Jet Lag?
Jet lag is the phenomenon when your internal clock doesn’t match the actual day. You get sleepy in mid afternoon because your brain still “thinks” it’s the middle of the night, and then wake up at 3 am because the sun in rising in your home time zone. It’s disorienting, it often means you get less sleep than is ideal, and you sure as hell can’t lift to the best of your ability like that.
If left to your own devices, it takes about 1 day to adjust to each timezone you’ve crossed, though it’s slightly faster travelling westward than eastward. We already touched on why - human free running periods are slightly longer than 24 hours. Your body already wants to go to bed later and get up later.
Time Zone Adjustment for Pros - Example Plan
Okay, time to make an actual plan to adjust to your new time zone.
Before landing
Start eating and sleeping according to your new time zone. This isn’t super fun, but meal timing, especially breakfast timing, is a massively powerful zeitgeber. Something like a 16 hour fast followed by breakfast at 7 or 8 am in your new timezone will help start your adjustment before you even land. If you’re going to do this, you’ll want to take some kind of high protein meal to eat, because it almost certainly won’t line up with the meal times provided by the airline!
During the day
Don’t nap. Don’t do it. You’re going to need that precious sleep pressure to help you to go to sleep at the right time. Do your best not to sleep during the day, but if you really have to, try limit yourself to 30 minutes.
Eat at normal times. This might be hard because you won’t be hungry (or will be hungry at weird times), but eating is an important zeitgeber, and it’ll help you adjust faster if you eat regularly.
In the evening
Follow your regular evening routine at a sensible time. If you don’t have a regular evening routine, see post one in this series.
Have a warm bath or shower. Compared to control groups, a warm bath before bed increased deep sleep by 15% in healthy adults, and decreased sleep latency in animal models by around 25%. That’s a massive win. (There’s a whole bunch of papers on this, but here’s one that has a good summary.)
Take melatonin 40 minutes before you want to go to sleep (even if it isn’t a regular part of your routine.) If you have a healthy circadian rhythm you’ll experience a natural spike in melatonin, triggering sleepiness in the evening. In a new time zone this won’t happen, or will happen at the wrong time. You can make sure you get that sleep inducing melatonin spike at the right time by taking exogenous melatonin.
This is my preferred melatonin (<- that’s an affiliate link).
In the morning
Get up as soon as that alarm goes off (or one snooze, if you must.)
Get some sunlight, if you can. If you can, some warmth goes a long way too.
Eat a regular breakfast and drink regular coffee (if you drink coffee normally).
Bathe yourself in blue light. For real. Blue light is supposed to selectively stimulate your suprachiasmatic nucleus (the part of your brain primarily responsible for regulating your circadian rhythm). That’s not the best thing to do in the evening before you go to sleep, but if you’re trying to wake up, it might help.
Don’t
Drink alcohol. If you’re travelling to compete you probably shouldn’t be drinking anyway, but it’s worth reiterating. It’s beyond the scope of this post to talk about all the consequences of alcohol on sleep, but needless to say it’s bad, especially if you’re trying to adjust to a new sleep schedule.
Drink caffeine within 6 hours of going to bed. Make it 8 to 10 if you can. I know it can be tempting when you’re sleepy (because you’ve been awake 20 hours, or because it’s midnight in your home time zone) to have a coffee - just a boost to keep you awake until it’s time for bed. Because caffeine has a long biological half-life, it can unfortunately disrupt your sleeping for many hours after you’ve last had any.
Ending Thoughts
That concludes my thoughts so far on adapting to new time zones for athletes. Travelling to compete is certainly exciting, but it brings a set of novel challenges you never even have to think about when you’re competing a short drive from home.
If you’re finding this series on sleep interesting, I highly recommend the book “Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams” by Matthew Walker. “Recovering from Training” by the team from Renaissance Periodisation is great too. I’m planning one more post in this series - a practical guide on how to screen for sleep deficits and poor sleep hygiene in athletes. Stay tuned for that.
I hope you’ve got something interesting out of this series so far. Let me know what you think in the comments below.