Sports Psychology

It’s so easy to say sleep is crucial in the restorative process. But how much sleep do athletes really need?

As the levels of physical and mental stress increase so does the amount of sleep we need. I was working with an athlete who competed at the last 4 Olympics and is now more or less retired - he reckons he can easily sleep some 2 hours less each night now he’s not training as hard.

However, sleep seems to be the first thing to suffer with athletes needing to combine training with study and/or work. Late nights followed by poor quality sleep and early starts will clearly hurt training quality.

Sleep can impact performance in three main ways:

1. Lost sleep reduces the performance of the cerebral cortex in the frontal lobe of the brain which is responsible for the most important mental functions in sport- focus, concentration, flexibility, decision making and information processing.

2. The very deep or Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep helps consolidate activities, tasks and skills undertaken that day. It is indispensable for helping motor learning and skill acquisition.

3. Sleep is a significant stimulator of growth hormone release - the body’s natural agent for cell growth and reproduction. In addition to acting to increase muscle mass, growth hormone also stimulates the immune system. Sleep deprivation raises levels of the stress hormone Cortisol which may interfere with tissue repair and growth.

7 Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Sleep:

1. Have a regular wake up time and go to bed time each day. The body loves consistency and your internal body clock will be set around this regular patterning. It’s best to follow this pattern through weekends too, so as to reduce disruption to your body clock.

2. Avoid coffee, alcohol and other stimulants prior to heading to bed. Aim to reduce stimulant intake after 4-6 pm.

3. Try to avoid high intensity exercise and large meals after 7:30pm (assuming bed time of 10pm).

4. Create quiet time before bed. The aim is to reduce stressors and stimulators to allow the mind time to wind down. Just as we do with small children, you might like to create a bed time ritual to allow sleep fullness to grow. Also, limit exposure to loud music, bright lights, computers and work related stress just before bed.

5. Your sleep environment is important so aim for a quiet dark bedroom with a cool temperature. Get the best quality linen, mattress and pillow possible. Consider taking your own linen and pillow when traveling

6. Some say that if you are not asleep in 30 minutes then get out of bed, read or undertake another quiet activity and return to bed when drowsy. Try it and see if it works; otherwise, just lay there quietly and rest - you can’t force sleep but if you’re relaxed and peaceful you’ll rest nicely and likely go to sleep. (My friends at Sports Mind Skills may be able to help if you’re having consistent trouble getting to sleep with their Sleeping Better for Sport MP3 download).

7. Do not nap within 1-3 hours of bed time. If you do nap in the day then aim for 20-40 minutes around lunch time.

How Much Sleep for Athletes?

Many would say as much as possible! However, we don’t all have that luxury.

It’s worthwhile taking note of an ongoing study which suggests that athletes who get an extra amount of sleep are more likely to have better performance, mood, and alertness.

These findings spring from an albeit small investigation involving five students on the Stanford University men’s and women’s swimming teams.

The participants maintained their usual sleep-wake pattern for the first two weeks of the study, and then extended their sleep to 10 hours per day for six to seven weeks.

With extra sleep the athletes swam a 15-meter meter sprint 0.51s faster, reacted 0.15s quicker off the blocks, improved turn time by 0.10s, and increased kick strokes by 5.0 kicks.

Researcher Cheri Mah of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory said “Typically, many athletes accumulate a large sleep debt by not obtaining their individual sleep requirement each night, which can have detrimental effects on cognitive function, mood, and reaction time. These negative effects can be minimized or eliminated by prioritizing sleep in general and, more specifically, obtaining extra sleep to reduce one’s sleep debt.”

“It is interesting to note that many of the athletes in the various sports I have worked with, including the swimmers in this study, have set multiple new personal records and season best times, as well as broken long-standing Stanford and American records while participating in this study,” Mah said.

The findings led Mah to recommend that athletes make sleep a part of the training program, aiming for 8+ hours most of the time. Also, athletes should extend nightly sleep for several weeks before competition to reduce sleep debt.

Maybe it’s time for coaches to consider slumber parties rather than 6 a.m. practices!

I feel the pangs of excitement whenever I sense a juicy competition, be it in sport or otherwise. And it should be that way because that’s a great reason to love sport - a chance to test yourself against others.

Anxiety is a normal human emotion in the face of a threat. It is a state of high arousal and a feeling of discomfort. Anxiety has its benefits. In sport it can help you to succeed by motivating you to beat your opponent - if you’re are afraid of failure you might push yourself harder. But too much anxiety can get in the way of your success. If you are too anxious you might get distracted, make mistakes or even give up.

One way to keep track of how anxiety may be affecting your performance is to monitor your self-talk. Self talk is the thoughts and beliefs that you have about yourself. It can bring you up or drag you down. It can be a distraction or it can help you focus on an aspect of your game plan or technique.

Consider the difference between feeling anxious and thinking “oh no, I’m nervous, I’m not sure if I can do this” and “I feel anxious, but that’s normal, it means my body and mind are ready”.

Let’s do a practical exercise - take a moment to try to recall in your mind a time when you felt really nervous and anxious.

Perhaps it was just before a big competition. Perhaps it was during a competition when the attention and pressure was on.

Recall how your body felt. Perhaps you noticed things like rapid heart rate, sweating, shaking, shallow fast breathing, racing thoughts, butterflies, nausea, or needing to go to the toilet. Some people become quiet, others talk a lot, some yawn and some get very restless. These are all normal signs of nerves or anxiety.

Now try to recall any thoughts or beliefs you had at the time. Often when we are anxious we think worried thoughts, negative or unhelpful thoughts or extreme thoughts. Perhaps you are thinking “Don’t stuff this up”, or “My competitors look so strong, how can I possibly beat them?”

Maybe you were thinking about an injury and worried you wouldn’t hold up. Maybe you were worried you wouldn’t be able to stand the pain. Maybe deep down you believed that you were not really good enough or that everything was riding on that one event, or that if you failed it’d prove you really are a loser.

These are all common beliefs held by athletes.

On that occasion how did you perform?

Did the anxiety affect your performance in some way?

Now try to absorb yourself in a different way of thinking and a new set of beliefs. Start by challenging some of those old thoughts.

Ask yourself:

Does my anxiety sometimes drag me down?
Do I worry that I’m not good enough?
Do I focus on the negative or blow things out of proportion sometimes?
Would a different way of thinking help me perform better?
What happened last time I worried about this?
Was it better than I thought it would be?
What is the evidence for and against my worried thoughts?
What is the likelihood that my fears will come true?

Focus in specifically on whatever you need to feel less anxious about and what specifically you need to say to yourself to achieve a positive frame of mind.

Here are some examples of helpful self-talk. Chose the ones that relate to you and spend some time repeating them in your mind:

I have trained hard.
I am strong.
All I can expect of myself is to do my best at this point in time.
I can only expect what is reasonable.
I am improving all the time.
There’s lots of evidence that I’m a highly skilled athlete.
My body is recovering well.
I can find the way to beat my competitors.
I have strengths they lack.
I can push through the pain.

Now, take a moment to bring to mind the memory of a time you performed well.

Picture how you looked. Recall how it felt in your body.

When things were going right for you what could you see, hear, smell, taste and feel? What went through your mind? As you imagine these things and think these thoughts, you might start to feel more confident and strong.

Now ask yourself: What are my technical goals right now? What do I need to focus on in my training and competition? Focusing on winning or success can make you more anxious and distract you from how you are going to get there.

Reduce your anxiety by thinking about a specific goal. Talk to yourself calmly and positively about what you need to do each moment with respect to your own performance.

This reinterpretation of feelings of anxiety and deliberate focus on the process of playing your sport can raise feelings of readiness, resolve and determination.

My favourite reminder - You’re not asking yourself to do anything you can’t do.

(You might like to try a MP3 tool on Managing Arousal and Anxiety in Sport or Self-Talk in Sport ).

Elite athletes naturally have a will to win, but by their actions many athletes also act to motivate and inspire others to achieve their best.

With this thought in mind, we’ve put together a list, albeit controversially, of the World’s 25 Most Motivational Athletes.

The ability of an athlete to inspire others isn’t purely about their performance. Criteria for inclusion included their ability to come back from adversity, their ability to win against quality competition again and again and their sportsmanship - how they handled themselves whether winning or loosing.

(Each entry has a link for more information and a YouTube link for video).

The World’s 25 Most Motivational Athletes

1. Lance Armstrong (USA) - did well at cycling, got cancer, then came back & conquered the cycling world with seven Tour de France wins . But what cements his No.1 position is that he has put his immense power as an athlete of the world to great use through his establishment of the Lance Armstrong Foundation and commitment to the cause to end cancer.
Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.