DEVELOPING GOOD HABITS: Sleep, the Natural and Legal PED!!!

In my last blog I promised to focus on some of the “poor habits” that are easily found in many, if not all, high schools when it comes to LIFESTYLE issues concerning Diet, Sleep and Regenerative Methods.

There is one, simple element that separates those who produce extraordinary achievement from those who, despite the same abilities, get side-tracked by mediocrity, Those who excel just have adopted better habits. Those who learned to fill their days, weeks and months with good habits that are help them to excel in their chosen endeavors, achieve far more than those who get side-tracked by self-destructive habits. The key term to focus on is self-destructive.

Many philosophers, Aristotle, Socrates, Thomas Aquinas, etc. have been credited with pointing out that “HABITS CREATE CHARACTER AND YOUR CHARACTER DETERMINES YOUR DESTINY”.

What is most interesting is that the bad habits, that diminish our productiveness, health, growth, etc., ARE THOSE THAT ARE EASILY ACQUIRED with little effort and usually are the results of acting without any real thought. In contrast, good habits generally require effort on our part.

For children, pre-adolescents and adolescents good habits could include getting the right amount of quality sleep on a daily basis and eating foods that fuel the body for growth, exercise and mental tasks that will determine whether they achieve their optimal physical, mental and emotional development.

The good news is that lives change when habits change and WE ALL CAN CHANGE OUR HABITS. Many teen athletes have, and still do, get away with atrocious dietary and sleep habits BECAUSE they are genetically gifted and, with the help of the highly ANABOLIC stage of puberty stage, can excel at this age despite many bad habits. BUT, they will not be able to excel at the next level with the SAME BAD HABITS.
 
Those that do not change their self-destructive habits that were developed through the path of least resistance and lack of discipline, they will find themselves passed up by those whose good habits that were acquired INTENTIONALLY through the EFFORT OF DISCIPLINE.

One good habit that can be relatively easy to change for children and adolescents is that of getting the proper amount of quality sleep on a daily basis. Most coaches will echo the sentiment of Dan Pfaff that appears below with the question that was put to him in an interview on Speed Endurance. Com.

Dan Pfaff on the Importance of Rest and Recovery

 

Q: Rather than goals, what priorities do you have as a coach?

Dan Pfaff:  The first priority is health! So we look at what entities can be addressed to increase the wellness of the athlete. Is it mechanical? Is it inappropriate training? Is it how training elements are being combined? Is it diet? Is it nutrition? Is it sleep? Is it a lack of co-ordination of the therapy groups and the therapy styles?

In talking to a number of friends who coach track and other sports at the high school level, it seems that ceratin sports utilize EARLY MORNING TRAINING PROGRAMS in order to avoid conflicts with work, classes, tutoring and after-school sport practices.

Although this has been a staple in training programs for swimmers of all ages for 40-50 years, it presents concrete problems for growing and maturing youngsters as well as any athlete at any age.

I might put forth the question of “how many coaches and parents get the quality sleep they need?”

Since it is important FOR ALL OF US TO KNOW the many benefits of SLEEP and the hazards of lack of sleep, I am including some really good educational articles on this IMPORTANT HABIT. A HABIT THAT CAN BE CHANGED AT ANY TIME WITH THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF PLANNING. 

In the column to the right of this blog you can click on Optimizing performance and injury prevention by sleep monitoring in adolescent athletes to access a very informative article for athletes. Sleep, INDEED, is nature’s natural and LEGAL Performance Enhancing Ingredient for ALL ATHLETES OF ALL AGES, especially growing and maturing children, pre-adolscent and adolescent youngsters.

  BELOW IS A WELL WRITTEN ARTICLE BY JAMES CLEAR, “The Beginner’s Guide to Getting Better Sleep”.  I have highlighted and enlarged areas I think are more important to teen athletes AND Three Steps to Better Quality Sleep during Travel Meets” by Megan Fischer-Colbrie. 

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The Beginner's Guide to Getting Better Sleep 

By Behavior Science Expert/ James Clear

Lack of Sleep: How Much Sleep Do You Need?

How much sleep do you really need? To answer that question, let’s consider an experiment conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Washington State University.

The researchers began the experiment by gathering 48 healthy men and women who had been averaging seven to eight hours of sleep per night. Then, they split these subjects into four groups. The first group drew the short straw. They had to stay up for 3 days straight without sleeping. The second group slept for 4 hours per night. The third group slept for 6 hours per night. And the fourth group slept for 8 hours per night. In these final three groups — 4, 6, and 8 hours of sleep — the subjects were held to these sleep patterns for two weeks straight. Throughout the experiment the subjects were tested on their physical and mental performance.

Here’s what happened…
The subjects who were allowed a full 8 hours of sleep displayed no cognitive decreases, attention lapses, or motor skill declines during the 14-day study. Meanwhile, the groups who received 4 hours and 6 hours of sleep steadily declined with each passing day. The four-hour group performed worst, but the six-hour group didn’t fare much better. In particular, there were two notable findings.
First, sleep debt is a cumulative issue. In the words of the researchers, sleep debt “has a neurobiological cost which accumulates over time.” After one week, 25 percent of the six-hour group was falling asleep at random times throughout the day. After two weeks, the six-hour group had performance deficits that were the same as if they had stayed up for two days straight. Let me repeat that: if you get 6 hours of sleep per night for two weeks straight, your mental and physical performance declines to the same level as if you had stayed awake for 48 hours straight.

Second, participants didn’t notice their own performance declines. When participants graded themselves, they believed that their performance declined for a few days and then tapered off. In reality, they were continuing to get worse with each day. In other words, we are poor judges of our own performance decreases even as we are going through them. In the real world, well-lit office spaces, social conversations, caffeine, and a variety of other factors can make you feel fully awake even though your actual performance is sub-optimal. You might think that your performance is staying the same even on low amounts of sleep, but it’s not. And even if you are happy with your sleep-deprived performance levels, you’re not performing optimally.

The Cost of Sleep Deprivation

The irony of it all is that many of us are suffering from sleep deprivation so that we can work more, but the drop in performance ruins any potential benefits of working additional hours.
In the United States alone, studies have estimated that sleep deprivation is costing businesses over $100 BILLION each year in lost efficiency and performance. As Gregory Belenky, Director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University, puts it: “Unless you’re doing work that doesn’t require much thought, you are trading time awake at the expense of performance.”

And this brings us to the important question: At what point does sleep debt start accumulating? When do performance declines start adding up? According to a wide range of studies, the tipping point is usually around the 7 or 7.5 hour mark. Generally speaking, experts agree that 95 percent of adults need to sleep 7 to 9 hours each night to function optimally.
Here’s another way to say it: 95 percent of adults who get less than 7 hours of sleep on a routine basis will experience decreased mental and physical performance. According to Harvard Medical School, “The average length of time Americans spend sleeping has dropped from about nine hours a night in 1910 to about seven hours today.” And according to Dr. Lawrence Epstein at Harvard Medical School, 20 percent of Americans (1 in 5) get less than six hours of sleep per night.
Most adults should be aiming for eight hours per night. Children, teenagers, and older adults typically need even more.

How Sleep Works: The Sleep-Wake Cycle

The quality of your sleep is determined by a process called the sleep-wake cycle.

There are two important parts of the sleep-wake cycle:

1. Slow wave sleep (also known as deep sleep)
2. REM sleep (REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement)

During slow wave sleep the body relaxes, breathing becomes more regular, blood pressure falls, and the brain becomes less responsive to external stimuli, which makes it more difficult to wake up. This phase is critical for renewal and repair of the body. During slow wave sleep, the pituitary gland releases growth hormone, which stimulates tissue growth and muscle repair. Researchers also believe that the body’s immune system is repaired during this stage. Slow wave sleep is particularly critical is you’re an athlete. You’ll often hear about professional athletes like Roger Federer or LeBron James sleeping 11 or 12 hours per night. 

As one example of the impact of sleep on physical performance, consider a study researchers conducted on the Stanford basketball players. During this study, the players slept for at least ten hours per night (compared to their typical eight hours). During five weeks of extended sleep, the researchers measured the basketball players accuracy and speed compared to their previous levels. Free throw shooting percentage increased by 9 percent. Three point shooting percentage increased by 9.2 percent. And the players were 0.6 seconds faster when sprinting 80 meters. If you place heavy physical demands on your body, slow wave sleep is what helps you recover. 

REM sleep is to the mind what slow wave sleep is to the body. The brain is relatively quiet during most sleep phases, but during REM your brain comes to life. REM sleep is when your brain dreams and re-organizes information. During this phase your brain clears out irrelevant information, boosts your memory by connecting the experiences of the last 24 hours to your previous experiences, and facilitates learning and neural growth. Your body temperature rises, your blood pressure increases, and your heart rate speeds up. Despite all of this activity, your body hardly moves. Typically, the REM phase occurs in short bursts about 3 to 5 times per night.

Without the slow wave sleep and REM sleep phases, the body literally starts to die. If you starve yourself of sleep, you can’t recover physically, your immune system weakens, and your brain becomes foggy. Or, as the researchers put it, sleep deprived individuals experience increased risk of viral infections, weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, mental illness, and mortality.
To summarize: slow wave sleep helps you recover physically while REM sleep helps you recover mentally. The amount of time you spend in these phases tends to decrease with age, which means the quality of your sleep and your body’s ability to recover also decrease with age.

BELOW IS AN ARTICLE WITH TIPS OF HOW TO GET BETTER QUALITY SLEEP WHEN COMPETING AWAY FROM HOME.

3 Steps to Better Sleep during Travel Meets

   Megan Fischer-Colbrie at blog.bridgeathletics Jul 29, 2014 

 

With the end of the season fast approaching, swimmers are beginning to taper for peak performances. Elite athletes know how to minimize the negative side effects of traveling for meets, including how to sleep well on the road. You’ve put in all the hard work—now let’s discuss a few simple tips to help you rest and recover the night before you race.

1. Adjust to the correct time zone

Adjusting to a new time zone requires a bit of discipline. If you stick to an appropriate bedtime, it will still take you about one day for each hour of time difference to adjust to the new schedule. If you are traveling west to east, it is especially challenging to go to bed earlier. Start making adjustments to your bedtime before you leave for your trip. 

2. Turn off all lights and devices

Bright light inhibits the production of melatonin, which is responsible for triggering sleepiness when released. Do not stare at tablets, phones, or the TV in the half hour or so before bedtime. 

3. Turn down the thermostat

Colder temperatures help people sleep more soundly. Your body temperature drops down to a set point optimal for your brain to induce sleep. Think of this temperature as an internal thermostat. If your surrounding room is too hot or too cold, you will be more prone to waking up as your body struggles to maintain its set point. Generally, colder temperatures are preferable, but you need to be comfortable. Try setting the dial to somewhere between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The comfort level of your room temperature will affect the quality of your REM sleep—the period of deep sleep during which dreams occur. 

Experts from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine say you should think of your sleep environment like a cave: it should be cool, quiet, and dark. The same idea applies to naptime in between prelims and finals. Having a roommate on travel meets can add an element of surprise to this equation. Bring earplugs and decide on a bedtime you both will follow to avoid disrupting each other’s sleep. Set a back up alarm in the morning so you wake up in time for warm up, especially if the time zone makes it difficult to wake up in the first couple days of a meet. After all your training is in the bag, pay attention to these simple tips to maximize your rest for peak performances!