wHen Luke Gupta started as an elite athlete performance coach 15 years ago. Sleep was usually much lower than the list of priorities. “Athletes will celebrate the fact that they can work with less sleep,” he says. “It was almost considered a sign of resilience.”
Since then, attitudes have changed radically. Gupta adds a PhD in Sleep Quality and Elite Sports to her Masters in Exercise Physiology, providing sleep science support to clients including the English Women’s Football Team and Team GB at the Parisio Lymph. “Athletes are now very aware of the positive and negative impacts they have on sleep and their performance,” he says.
Gupta and other sleep experts say there is growing evidence of a feedback loop Better sleep can produce better performance and better sleep. And you don’t have to be an Olympic athlete to make a profit.
“From a pure physiological perspective, there is a point late in the afternoon or evening when the circadian rhythm peaks, and that is considered the best time to train from a performance perspective,” says Gupta.
Sleep is largely dominated by those same rhythms, so the timing of exercise can affect our nights. An optimal 5pm run or gym session will give the system time to calm down again before hitting hay. Conversely, Gupta says that something too active at the wrong time can disrupt the cycle and affect your sleep.
“Walking up to train at 5am, for example, can disrupt the rhythm,” he says. The same goes for late-night training. “If the signal you are waking up is too close to when you want to sleep, this can start to cause problems.”
Gupta says Tuesday night hockey training means that it often means that nods can be difficult. After intense efforts such as marathons, many people struggle to sleep as their heart rate and cortisol levels may remain high. “Your feet hurt, you are likely dehydrated and malnourished, and you are probably still bustling with experience,” he explains.
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Sleep and performance coach Greg Potter suggests that sleep-dependent exercise is just as moody as biology. “If you’re running through beautiful forests rather than busy cities, natural exercise will probably be better for your mental health,” he added that there is no strong evidence to suggest that certain types of training are better for sleep, but that the effort has a positive effect. “You run out of different energy reserves, which seems to promote sleep because sleep is a state where you can restore them.”
Research on elite athletes has shown a link between bad sleep and performance. For example, the accuracy of servings for a tennis player decreases when they lose sleep. On the other hand, intentionally extending sleep can improve your performance, even if you have repetitive skills such as endurance race time and time.
Still, if you’re not too wiped out, exercise can be useful after a bad night. Potter says cognitive, performance and blood glucose regulation can improve as a result. “Dialing the volume a little will counter the negative effects of sleep loss.”
Finally, while it’s worth making the most of the link between sleep and exercise, don’t think about it again. “This ‘sleep’ mentality isn’t always useful for individuals who are worried about sleep,” says Gupta.
