Just Sleep. Are you getting enough?

We all now how important sleep is but are we really listening to what the experts are telling us? For example lets take a pre olympic athlete swimmer still studying in school or college, say between the age of 17 and 20.  Mornings start at anywhere from 5:00 am when they get up and have to get ready for training. Hopefully they have light meal or yogurt before hand. From then its training for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours followed with a quick change from wet swim trunks into a school uniform. Don’t forget a decent breakfast and then off to there first class or lecture at about 8:45am or 9:00am. So far they have been up for about 2 or more hours as well as putting their body under physical stress. Not to mention the mental concentration of making sure their swimming technique is correct every stroke.  

Lunch anyone?

By about 1:00pm our athlete is now expected to have mentally focused on 2 to 3 different subjects. Plus take notes for the past 3 hours, but there is relief at a hand. LUNCH TIME. This consists of socializing with their peers while trying to devour as much food as possible in the short space of time. All the while they are relating to people and peers who have woken up a full 2 hours after them. Their peers have also had the luxury of taking their time to start their day.  Back to the books. For the next 2 hours our athlete then has to focus on the meaning of English literature. It gets worse math problems have to be done. You and I would start crying, if we had been through what they have done so far . 

With the ring of the final bell school is out, or if at collage they have yet another class to go to. Now time to get to training, which may be a challenge if the pool is not close by. However if the pool is close or part of their education facility then its handy. Who ever they still might need to do a yoga or weights session plus, fit in a top up of  some much need food. 

More training. 

From about 5:00pm there is another training session under way for the next 1 1/2 to 2 hours, which consists of 100% focus and effort while their coach puts them through their paces. Again a quick change then home to study and eat. With a plate full of food in our athletes stomach, we now hit the books for a solid 2 to 3 hours of study. After that there;s revision only to be in bed by 10:00pm at the earliest. Of course after a solid 7 hours of sleep our athlete is good to go again.

So what can we do? Well swimmers and parents need to be as time efficient as possible. Weekends are a great time to plan for the weekly meals and extra activities that might come up in the following week.  If your reading this on a mobile phone and its past 9:30pm, put the phone down now. Finish what you need to do and go to bed, then you can read the rest tomorrow.

This could be a problem.

Mobile phones can be  a real problem when it comes to lack of sleep for teenagers and young adults. The erge to socialise while trying to drift of too sleep can be tempting but also a huge problem. Mobile screen devices emit a blue light which can inhibit the production of melatonin, a hormone that controls your sleep and wake cycle. Plus every time you hear the “ding” you brain gets a hit of serotonin. Sertonin is otherwise known as the happy drug. So if your in bed trying to go to sleep and you hear that “ding” you get an instant hit of serotonin and your brain wakes up again. 

Did you know the harder you train the harder it is for you to sleep? The really hard sessions that you have can put your body under a tonne of stress. When we are under stress our body produces cortisol, which can manage blood pressure, influences our sleep/wake cycle. We can also have too much cortisol if we over train too. When cortisol is combined with our adrenaline can be responsible for our “flight or fight” instinct. It can take about 36 to 48 hours for cortisol to reach its normal cycle level again.  So as you can imagine getting to sleep may be a little tricky after that.

Become a Napster

One way to help our swimmers to get more sleep is to try and increase their sleep in the form of naps. Did you know that a 20 to 30 minute nap can increase alertness from the time you wake up and for the rest of the day. A study performed on astronauts found that a 40 minute nap improved their performance by up to 34%.

So clearly if your a swimmer or a swim parent you need to ensure sleep is right up there with training effort level and diet. Otherwise everything else you do may not matter.

Sweet dreams.

For more information please have look at the following articles:

Can Sleep Improve Your Athletic Performance?

How sleep affects athletic performance

How does sleep affect athletes