Threshold | The fitness newsletter

Threshold #11 | The importance of sleep

I have always been able to sleep, but have I been getting good sleep?

By good, what I mean is the type of sleep where my cognitive and physical self are fully recharged each day. The foundation of good training and high performance is sleep.

The answer to that is “I don’t know”.

So how can you sleep better?

What is good sleep?

Good sleep can be broken down into REM, deep, light & being awake. These are the four stages of sleep. Typically 15-30minute into your sleep you’ll be in deep sleep. Then throughout the night you’ll drift into REM sleep - resting eye movement. This is the stage you dream.

Light sleeping is exactly what you think it is too. Being awake, is being awake - and it is completely natural to see times during the night when you do awaken.

Good sleep is when you have had approximately 20-30% of your sleep in REM, and 20% in deep sleep. Percentages vary, but it’s universally agreed that getting sufficient REM and deep sleep is crucial for your body to recover over night.

What can improve sleep?

Understanding your circadian & ultradian cycles is crucial. The former is one 24 hour cycle and the latter is a cycle which reoccurs throughout the day. These cycles need to be respected, if one is interrupted then sleep patterns can be.

Understanding a few things which we do in our daily habits can make a huge difference and hopefully improve sleep. Bright light in the morning approximately 30 minutes within waking up will ignite the start of the morning cycle. Next the body temperature needs to increase, and indeed this is one of the main reasons we wake up, so a cold shower can activate your body to increase its temperature. These two things will activate the cycle to get the day started.

Finally, caffeine can interrupt the later stages of the day when you may feel sleepy. Too much caffeine within 10 hours of your sleep starting to end the day may delay the onset of sleepiness. Restricting caffeine to midday (at latest) would ensure at a 10pm bed time, caffeine is likely out of your system.

All of the above are ways you can tweak your daily lifestyle to improve sleep.

What can I do differently?

I have made changes to ensure my sleep cycle is improved. I’ve limited my caffeine intake to midday. I’ve tried to ensure I’m off a device 20mins before sleeping. I have trained to be in bed before I’m tired. I try to eat 2 hours before sleeping. I take cold showers, and recently started to find sunlight as soon as possible after waking up. The latter is harder in winter in London.

I wear a Garmin watch 24\7 and currently the changes I’ve made have increased the amount of REM and deep sleep I’m getting. The data doesn’t lie. But deep sleep can be improved. I’m also trying to sleep for 8+ hours, currently successfully - I’m noticing my body feeling vastly more recovered.

These changes seem to be working, but time will tell if they are long lasting.

So, that’s how and why sleep is important.

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V02 max running session: pyramid run

Warm up:

• 2km @ Z1/Z2 heart rate zone

Main set:

• 100m sprint

• 200m sprint

• 300m sprint

• 400m sprint

• 300m sprint

• 200m sprint

• 100m sprint

Repeat twice

Recovery

• 2km @ Z1/Z2 heart rate zone

Thanks again for tuning in and reading - like always the above is what I am actually doing in training and in sear of higher performance.

You can follow my progress on Strava.

Have a great week,

Robert