World Sleep Day: Olympians share techniques used to optimise performance
Sleep, a natural superpower, can be more challenging during periods of stress, so how do athletes maximise the benefits of sleep during training, jetlag inducing travel, and competitions themselves? Olympics.com investigates on World Sleep Day.
Eleven hours and 24 minutes. That’s the time period British cyclist Becky James recorded on a sleep app on the first day of a holiday after completing the 2016 season, which included claiming two silver medals at the Rio Olympic Games. “Day 1 on holiday and I have a sleep like this!!!” James captioned the post.
The greatest alpine skier of all time, Mikaela Shiffrin, is renowned for her fondness for sleeping with the moniker of Sir Naps a Lot adopted by her teammates. “She’s famous on the World Cup circuit for taking naps, on command, in chairlifts and on the floors of ski lodges,” wrote Time magazine in 2018. The woman herself posts regularly about her favourite past-time. “Hmmm.. I wonder if sleep likes me as much as I like sleep? #randomthoughts #professionalsleeper,” she wrote on Facebook in March 2014.
The restorative powers of sleep are a key part of an athlete’s preparation, competition-time tool, and recovery, so on World Sleep Day, 17 March, Olympics.com takes a look at the obstacles, benefits, and work-arounds athletes use to optimise performance.
Jetlag management
On a vlog detailing his travel to Tokyo 2020, Team Ireland artistic gymnast Rhys McClenaghan, filmed himself and his coach donning a fetching pair of glasses with red-hued lenses.
“Ain’t no blue light getting in here baby,” McClenaghan commented, referencing the airport’s brain-agitating lighting, which affects sleep patterns similar to a phone or laptop screen.
Such are the detailed plans of athletes, McClenaghan’s schedule included sleeping on the first half of the flight in order to get into the Japanese time zone as seamlessly as possible. It worked, although it also likely helped that the pair got a sneaky upgrade to business class for the London to Tokyo leg of the trip.
An early training session on the day of the flight saw the Dublin resident – who went on to become world pommel horse champion in 2022 – wake at 4.30 in the morning to go to a training session and yet still pull off a hugely difficult routine, “which is exactly what I’m training for.
“Coach Luke (Carson, National Gymnastics Coach for Ireland) always says he should be able to wake me up in the middle of the night and I should be able to do a routine straight away and I proved to myself I could do that today.”
Auto pilot
That ability to been in such a state of readiness that your body can almost go through the motions despite less-than-perfect sleep, is something also cited by trampolinist, Bryony Page. On her way to winning silver at Rio 2016, the first time that any British trampolinist had won an Olympic medal, Page later told Olympics.com she’d only had a few hours sleep the night before.
“I actually probably only slept two hours because of the buzz and the excitement and adrenaline you have… so I just rested my eyes and accepted that that was going to be that. I've trained through times when I haven't slept very well… when I'm tired or fatigued, so for me, it was nothing different than that. It was just a competition, and I could only control what I could control and try my best.
“Sometimes it's like you try too hard for sleep, so it's just like, just relax and just rest your body and rest your mind, and if you can't fall asleep, that's OK, because I know tomorrow, I'm going to have loads of adrenaline, I'm going to be really excited, I'm going to be focused, so it was just kind of an acceptance, really.
“I do remember the finals, just being absolutely knackered to the point I had to like change my (preparation). Normally I have to calm my breathing down before a competition, before I get on the trampoline, but I had to pump myself up because I was like, I need this extra level of excitement, adrenaline and nerves, because I'm tired, so I've got to do that. So yeah, it was a bit interesting.”
Sleep deprivation
In a similar vein, at a Norwegian alpine ski team pre-season preparation camp, the athletes were tested to their absolute limits, including how to perform despite extreme sleep deprivation.
Now-retired alpine skier Kjetil Jansrud detailed the three-day military-style training session on an Instagram post in which he and his team-mates were guided in mental and physical challenges by the Norwegian Coastal Ranger Commando unit, in an effort to strengthen the team’s bond ahead of the World Cup season and the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.
The physical and mental challenges, which aimed to strengthen team spirit, learn debrief and feedback techniques, develop mental toughness and get used to dealing with uncertainty, started each day with a morning swim in the Arctic Ocean.
The first day then focused on physical challenges, while the second centred around mental challenges and techniques. On the third day, the Attacking Vikings were left outside in the cold overnight covered only by a shelter they’d constructed together and warmed by a bonfire they’d started.
“One of the main lessons learned for the athletes is that the human body is able to perform really well even when the mental and physical conditions are not optimal,” the Norwegian Alpine Ski team’s strength and conditioning coach Bjørn Ole Fosse told alpine skiing world governing body, the FIS. “In fact, even if they were deprived of sleep and food for three days, all athletes performed better in the physical test right after the training camp than how they did just before this tough experience.”
Sleeping like a baby
There is one time a broken sleep is accepted by an athlete, and another when it is actively welcomed.
The arrival of a newborn is the biggest disruptor to maintaining healthy sleep patterns in any household let alone in an athlete’s strict regime.
Months prior to artistic gymnast, Max Whitlock, having his daughter Willow, the then two-time Olympic champion was anticipating the changes.
“The first thing people say to you is you’re going to get no sleep, which is going to be a tough one especially when I’m used to 10-11 hours sleep a night. I was talking to the boys about it, and I think after the worlds, I might start tapering my sleep so building towards six hours to eight hours rather than 10-11, which I think might help me by the time February comes round, but we’ll see.”
So, what actually happened?
"I used to get ten to 12 hours' sleep a night, so getting up with Willow the first few nights hit me like a ton of bricks," Whitlock told Hello magazine in March 2019.
When Whitlock went back to training, his wife Leah said she’d stay up that night. Six hours solid sleep followed.
"I felt fresh – so, so fresh," smiled Whitlock. "Maybe I was having too much sleep before.”
There is, of course, one time when athletes are happy not to sleep at all – after they’ve achieved their Olympic dream.
Qatari Mutaz Barshim and Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi were jointly awarded Olympic gold after both leaping 2.37m in the high jump final at Tokyo 2020.
At five o’clock the next morning, Barshim could be found wandering around the Olympic Village, a heady mix of adrenaline and excitement keeping him from sleeping after claiming his first Olympic title. Achieving his dream was keeping him wide awake.
