Sleep Your Way to More Speed

Written by James Witts, content writer for Nopinz.

In our last blog, we took a deep dive into wearables, especially optimising heart rate variability, which is a popular metric used by the likes of Whoop, Garmin and Oura to assess your readiness to train. Here, we’ll tap into another commonplace metric in wearables and sports watches – sleep – to reveal their accuracy. Arguably more importantly, we start by disclosing the cycling, running and triathlon benefits of a good night’s sleep – okay, many good nights of sleep – plus how you can improve your sleep quality and quantity.

How much sleep do you need?

How much sleep do you need? Sleep quantity, like many aspects of performance, is an individual thing. “Broadly, you’re looking at between seven and nine hours a night,” says sleep expert Dr Sarah Gilchrist, who’s spent over 20 years working in the high-performance sport industry including as technical lead for the English Institute of Sport. “However, we know from studies on athletes that they often get less than seven hours. That’s particularly true of sports that I’ve worked in like rowing where you have to rise early to train.”
And we’re sure it’s true for many Nopinz users, who are up at dawn in search of more speed and stamina. But while sleep duration varies for all of us, one important factor remains the same: we all enter the same sleep cycle in search of an optimum physical and mental overhaul.

“You have a 90-minute sleep cycle, which is repeated throughout the night,” says Dr Gilchrist. “Within that sleep cycle are four sleep stages of which the first couple are light. If you were to nap for 20 minutes – which could be beneficial for athletes – you’d be in these stages. You then move into the two deep stages of sleep where growth hormone is released, muscles are repaired and memories consolidated.” This, as you’ll discover, is important when assessing the benefits of wearables…

Why sleep matters for the athlete

So, seven to nine hours of sleep is the aim each evening. That’s because, for endurance athletes, sufficient sleep improves training adaptation; accelerates recovery between sessions; rapidly replenishes glycogen stores; and makes exercise feel easier, so you can work that bit harder.
“That’s important because if you haven’t slept well for a week or two, your immune system suffers,” says Dr Gilchrist. “Elite athletes and amateurs who train heavily have compromised immunity anyway, simply from the amount of stress they’re placing on their body. So, this is a double whammy. You’re more susceptible to common athlete ailments like upper respiratory tract infections if you’re training hard and lacking sleep.”

Good sleep also increases your reaction times, boosts mood and raises your chances of hitting race weight, too. How do we know? Just ask those who verge on insomnia. Research from 2022 revealed that insufficient sleep led to a 9% rise in abdominal fat. This appears to be linked to hormonal changes: higher levels of ghrelin – which increases hunger – and lower levels of leptin – which signals the fullness hormone. Lack of sleep also elevates cortisol – a stress hormone connected to increased belly fat.

What does all of this actually mean to your race time? Measuring the direct empirical benefits of sufficient sleep is tricky, but it’s mooted that adequate sleep across a season can lead to around a 1-3% improvement in endurance performance. That means a minimum 24 seconds off a 40-minute 10km; 108 seconds off a three-hour marathon; and two minutes 24 seconds slashed from a four-hour cycling event.

Because it’s easier to research, there’s more evidence to estimate the value of sleep when it’s removed, with one study of competitive athletes discovering that losing one hour of sleep per night for a week was associated with roughly a 9.5% reduction in performance metrics.

How can you boost your sleep?

So, we know sleep matters. But how do you enjoy more sleep for better health and performance? Here, our experts reveal their top-10 strategies to improve sleep, with many actionable right away…

1 – Screens in bed are a no-no, so banish the smartphones. And don’t fall into the blue-light trap, as there’s evidence that it’s the information overload from scrolling that leaves you awake, not the light waves. To that end, says Darren Morris, lead practitioner at Inochi Longevity who’s completed countless triathlons, watching television is okay, but keep content non-arousing. So, Location, Location, Location rather than Luther.

2 – “I’ve found red light therapy helps, plus a warm shower before bed,” says Canadian track cyclist Nick Wammes, who we came across in the last HRV blog. “Also, I always have my last mealtime no later than 90 minutes before bedtime.” Morris agrees that avoiding eating late is a good idea, as you’re waking your body up. If it’s impossible not to because of evening training, maybe eat half your dinner earlier and half after, so there’s less for your digestive system to process when you hit the sack.

3 – Cut the caffeine. “If you’re struggling with sleep, no caffeine after 2pm,” says Morris, “as it has a half-life of up to eight hours.”

4 – A cool, dark room is a must, plus double up. “My wife and I follow the Scandinavian sleep method, which essentially means individual duvets in a double bed,” says Morris. “It’s great if your partner – or you – toss and turn a lot.”

5 – Follow the slipstream of three-time Olympic gold medallist Adam Peaty, who uses an eye mask to block out light and Loop earplugs.

6 – “There are also nutritional strategies to help you sleep,” adds Gilchrist. “Tryptophan is a precursor to the sleep hormone melatonin and can be found in milk, turkey, almonds and many plants.”

7 – Magnesium’s also a popular supplement used by athletes to improve sleep due to its role in something called ‘GABAergic neurotransmission’ and melatonin regulation. However, though the anecdotal is strong, with many athletes crediting extra magnesium with a good night’s sleep, the empirical is less consistent, with modest benefits primarily observed in those with insomnia or magnesium deficiency. That said, many athletes could be in the latter camp if training hard in the heat, as magnesium is lost in sweat. It’s hard to consume too much magnesium, so it’s worth a go if you’re struggling to sleep.

8 – There’s evidence that cherry juice contains sleep-inducing properties. Triathlon and marathon running legend Alex Yee is a fan. He’s known for taking it around competition and when he’s doing a lot of long-haul travel.

9 – Comfort’s vital. Which is why your mattress is so important. Ideally, try before you buy as what’s firm for one athlete is perfect for another. Alternatively, join a Tour de France team for customised comfort. In the off-season, Elite Beds drove a lorry’s worth of mattresses over to Tudor Pro Cycling’s service course in Sursee, Switzerland, for the likes of Julian Alaphilippe to test which of their mattresses they preferred! The Swiss team also use recovery pillows from Blackroll, plus recovery pyjamas from Dagsmejan.

10 – Finally – and at odds with point two – there’s evidence that consuming 40g of casein protein around 30 minutes before sleep is of benefit, not to sleep but to increasing muscle repair and subsequent strength gains. Casein-rich foods include milk, cottage cheese and yoghurt. Then again, if this strategy either makes it hard to fall asleep or results in a midnight toilet visit, banish it straight away.

How do you know if you’ve slept better?

How do you know if you’ve slept better? There’s the subjective, namely waking up feeling bleary-eyed and via your alarm? You probably need more sleep. Wake up before your alarm and bounding around like Timmy Mallett? You’ve slept well.
And then there’s the objective, too, as sleep data is presented in wearables. Which is great on paper, but are they accurate enough to bother checking? “When it comes to sleep stages [which we talk about above], they’re not as accurate as sleep duration,” says Morris, who’s a Whoop convert and uses it with many of his clients.

That inaccuracy isn’t surprising, as wearables base their sleep data off accelerometers and algorithms for, at best, approximations compared to the gold standard of visiting a sleep clinic and polysomnography (which measures multiple physiological parameters including brain activity).

A recent analysis of the literature reviewed 16 studies and concluded that the Oura Ring aligned most closely with polysomnography for sleep latency and sleep efficiency, while selected Fitbit models showed “better agreement for REM (rapid eye movement) and deep sleep estimates”. The authors concluded that wearables can be useful for monitoring general sleep patterns and long-term trends.

“I wouldn’t look at the stage number in terms of minutes or hours,” adds Morris. “I’d focus on the percentages. So, I look at sleep duration and then the percentage of time spent in the main two restorative stages of slow wave and REM sleep.

“Typically, you want 40% of your sleep to be in these two stages on a consistent basis. That correlates with the research that suggests above 40% is when you genuinely start to feel better. If you’re often hitting no more than 25% in those stages, you’re going to feel groggy the next morning. Your body’s not flushing out all of the toxins from the previous day and your muscles aren’t repairing fully.”

Alternatively, you can ignore the sleep data altogether. Recently, I spoke to a sleep expert who banned several athletes from using wearables because they were so focused on optimising their sleep that the monitoring itself created anxiety, which made their sleep worse. This was doubly so if they’d felt they slept well, but sleep scores were low. “There’s even a name for it,” says Morris. “It’s orthosomnia.”

All in all, sleep is arguably the cheapest and most effective performance enhancer available. While wearables have their place and can help reveal long-term trends, they shouldn’t become another source of stress. More important is focusing on the basics. Nail the fundamentals, like cutting afternoon caffeine and a cool, dark bedroom, and you’ll recover better, stay healthier and give yourself the best possible chance of optimising your Nopinz apparel and turning training gains into faster racing.

 

–  This post was written by James Witts.

James Witts is a writer who specialises in endurance sport and sports science. He has three books on his palmares, including The Science of the Tour de France and Riding with the Rocketmen. He also writes for a broad range of consumer publications including Rouleur, Cyclist, The Observer and 220 Triathlon.