My last couple of blog posts have been about how to improve your sleep quality, and how to get over jet lag quickly, but there’s one last thing I want to cover to wrap up this blog series. How do you know if you’re in a sleep deficit, as an individual? How do you, as a coach, know if your athlete’s are sleep deprived? How much sleep should you/they be getting? How do you assess the quality of their sleep?
These are all the questions I intend to cover in this post. If you missed the previous blog posts, I’ve linked them here.
Part 1 - Sleep Plans for Powerlifters
Part 2 - How to Kick Jet Lag
How much sleep do I need?
From 2014-2018 I would estimate that on 90% of nights I got 10 hours of sleep (from the time I set my alarm). Anytime I would get less than that is when I would have bad training sessions or get sick. Sleep is 🔑.
Jackson Spencer (IPF World Champion)
If you’re concerned you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re almost certainly right, and even if you’re not, there is no harm is getting more sleep than you’re presently getting. Dr Cheri Mah, a sleep expert who works with pro teams in the NBA and NFL, recommends 8 to 10 hours for athletes.
That’s right - 8 to 10.
Like I said in the first blog in this series, this can seem daunting. I was chronically sleep deprived as a student, sleeping only 6 hours or so almost every night. Being told I had to sleep 8 hours a night was almost scary - it was like being told I had to spend two hours less each day doing things. I get it. If you’re a person currently getting less than 8 hours per night, you can start by creating yourself a slightly longer sleep oppourtity each night. Start with an extra 30 minutes. Once you can do that consistently, try for another 30, and another, until you get up to 8 hours or more.
So, the first point - if you’re creating a sleep opportunity of less than 8 hours per night, you’re probably chronically sleep deprived.
Side note - you’ll occasionally see evidence that suggest people who sleep more have higher all-cause mortality, and sometimes it is cited to suggest you shouldn’t sleep more than 8 hours per night. Although the statistic is true, it’s not a causal relationship. People who are chronically ill tend to sleep much more than average. Giving yourself a longer sleep opportunity each night will not put you at risk.
But I’m Fine on 6 Hours
Or 5 hours. Or 7 hours. Or whatever.
Dr Thomas Roth, Director of the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit explains this way more succinctly than I ever could.
The number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without any impairment, expressed as a percent of the population, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.
Don’t get me wrong, the so so-called “sleepless elite”, a group of humans with a genetic abnormality that allows them to survive effectively on much less sleep than every one else, definitely exist, but it’s probably not you. If you’re anything other than certain, trying to sleep more is only going to be good for you.
How’s my Sleep Hygiene?
Sleep is more than just duration. There’s a tonne of questionnaires available to look at your sleep hygiene, but I particularly like the Athlete Sleep Behaviour Questionnaire (ASBQ). The ASBQ asks 18 questions, and asks the athlete to rate themselves between 1 (never) and 5 (always), then sums the scores across the questions. Low scores (<25 or so) indicate good sleep hygiene, and high scores (>40 or so) indicate poor sleep hygiene.
The only modification I make for powerlifters is to the question abut caffeine - the original question is “How often do I use caffeine before training?”, which I don’t think is an appropriate question because I encourage caffeine use for it’s ergogenic effects. I’ve changed the question to “How often do I use caffeine within 5 hours of going to bed?”, which I think better reflects the actual requirements of my athletes.
The reason I like this survey over some of the other options is that it also helps you to identify which parts of the athlete’s sleep hygiene need to be addressed. In my athletes who end up with high (bad) scores, I’ve found it common for scores of 1 or 2 (good) in most categories, and then two or three 5s (very bad). That gives a good indicator of where to focus your efforts in creating a sleep plan.
Second point - identify the areas of your sleep hygiene that need improvement, and focus on them.
Screening Powerlifters for Sleep Problems
Let’s put that together. Creating a good night’s sleep comes from two places - the first is duration in bed, and the second is quality. From our perspective, that means looking at…
Duration of sleep opportunity. Am I in bed for 8 or more hours per night?
Sleep hygiene. How’s my sleep hygiene? What areas can I focus on to improve it?
I’ve been using that myself and with my athletes over the past few months, and it’s helped me identify some problems I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. You can have the best programming in the world, but if your lifter isn’t sleeping at night, they not going to make good progress (just like if they don’t eat, they’re going to struggle.) Unfortunately this isn’t something that always comes naturally when talking about what might be holding you back. So often it’s some kind of badge of honour to survive on little sleep, or to stay up all night. I have found these questions as a good catalyst for discussions we should be all having, with our coach or our athletes.
Further Reading
If you’ve found these blog posts informative or interesting and want to do some more reading, there are two books which I rate highly, and a podcast which is only 30 minutes but changed the way I think about sleep for athletes.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker - This book changed the way I think about sleep. It’s not focussed particularly closely on athletic performance, but more generally on health and wellness, but it’s compelling and well written.
Recovering from Training - this one is by the Juggernaut Team, and is focussed much more closely on the way athletes recover from training (obviously sleep being a large portion of that!) If you’re more interested in athletic performance and less generally and sleep, I think this is probably a better starting point.
The Nike Trained Interview with Dr Cherie Mah - (Not a book.) If you have 30 minutes to kill, this podcast serves as a great start to thinking about the role sleep has in athletic performance, and how we should probably consider it part of our regular training plans.
Well, that’s it from me on sleep for now. I hope you’ve taken something away from all this, even if it’s just that you should try sleep a little more than you already do. If anything has particularly stood out to you out of this series, I’d love to hear from you, either on Facebook, or in the comment section below.