 Most of us already know about the importance of sleep. It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that not getting enough sleep is probably going to make you tired. And being tired is probably not a good thing for pedaling bikes. That being said, getting enough sleep can often be ignored by athletes. For instance, there are those of us who need to wake up early in the morning or go to bed late at night just to get our workout in. And then I'm sure there are plenty of us who just stay up late watching TV or Netflix or some guy on YouTube talk about how you need more sleep in order to ride your bike faster. Tell me about it, dude. I'm usually up late arguing with strangers on the internet about whether disc brakes belong on road bikes or not. Surely if I write a novel in the comment section of this Facebook post, people will actually read it and agree with my opinion. Whatever the reason is, not getting enough sleep has been shown to slow the recovery process. This study on sleep restriction following heavy exercise had subjects perform a cycling and resistance exercise workout followed by a three-kilometer time trial the next day to assess how well the subjects recovered. In the control condition, subjects got a full night of sleep averaging a little over seven hours. While in the sleep restricted condition, sleep was restricted to an average of a little less than two and a half hours. Not too surprisingly, when subjects were sleep restricted, they did not fare as well the next day. But exactly how much did a poor night sleep cost them? Under the control condition, subjects saw about a half a percent drop in performance the following day while the sleep restricted condition saw a four percent drop in performance. This review confirms this stating that sleep loss attenuates the recovery process, although it actually appears that sleep loss may not overtly affect acute submaximal exercise performance. That last bit is interesting. You would assume that a bad night sleep would affect your workout the next day, and that certainly does seem to be the case if you had a hard workout the day before since your recovery will be compromised. But if that's not the case, then having a bad night sleep the night before a race or hard workout may not be as detrimental as you think. For example, this study on one night sleep deprivation on performance the following day had subjects stay up all night or get a normal night's rest before a series of anaerobic cycling tests. Interestingly enough, staying awake for 24 hours did not affect subjects performance. However, at 36 hours performance was impaired. This study on the effect of sleep on elite athlete performance stated that natural variation in sleep quality impacts psychomotor vigilance to a greater extent than athletic performance. It is suggested that one night of compromised sleep may not be immediately problematic, but that more extreme sleep loss or accumulated sleep debt may have more severe consequences. This is good news for anyone who gets the pre-race nerves and has a hard time sleeping before races. It seems that one night of bad sleep won't completely derail your performance. However, start to accumulate many sleepless nights in a row and we have a problem. This is where we move the conversation from acute sleep loss to chronic sleep loss or even sleep gain for that matter. What are the effects of adjusting your sleep pattern over a longer period of time? This study on the effect of sleep extension on collegiate basketball players had subjects undergo a five to seven week sleep extension period with a minimum of 10 hours in bed every night. What they found was that sprint time gradually improved the longer the subject stayed in this sleep extension phase. And in my experience with collegiate athletics, coaches rarely take this into account, regularly scheduling early morning practices when they know their players don't naturally get up that early and will be losing sleep by doing so. And this is not just a college athlete problem. Many of us wake up at five in the morning to hit the trainer before we have to go to work. And while I appreciate the dedication, make sure this isn't compromising the amount of sleep you would normally get. In this 2018 systematic review on sleep interventions designed to improve athletic performance, they looked at studies that implemented several sleep interventions, including sleep extension, napping, sleep hygiene, and post exercise recovery strategies. Evidence suggests that sleep extension had the most beneficial effects on subsequent performance. And while sleep extension or simply sleeping for a longer period of time each night has been shown to be the most effective in terms of performance, if you do find yourself sleep deprived, then taking a nap may be a good strategy to catch up on some sleep and improve subsequent workout performance. Let's shift gears and talk about a different but related topic, which is if you're looking to maximize performance, when in the day is the best time to go out for your ride. A lot of people report lower numbers and a lower overall feeling when they ride in the morning. Certainly seems to make sense, especially if you're not a morning person, but what does the science have to say about how time of day affects your cycling? This study on the effect of time of day on aerobic power had subjects perform cycling tests at eight in the morning and four in the afternoon. What they found was that time to exhaustion was 9% greater and peak VO2 was 7% higher in the afternoon than in the morning. These findings were backed up by this review on sleep circadian rhythm and athletic performance, which stated that athletic performance seems to be best in the evening around the time when core body temperature is typically at its peak. If you have the option of choosing when in the day you can ride, it may be best to do high intensity workouts in the afternoon. That being said, some of us are morning people and some of us are definitely not, and this will likely influence how well you performed in the morning. From this review on time of days effects on athletic performance, higher performing morning sport athletes had a higher morningness score than high performing afternoon sport athletes. Basically meaning that those of us who are morning people perform better in the morning than those of us who are not morning people. I know, shocker, right? You know, this actually makes a ton of sense, dude. I was so close to getting a KOM on a local climb last week, but I did it at eight in the morning. Totally would have made up that 10 minute difference had I just waited till the afternoon. You may also want to consider what time of day you'll be racing when trying to decide what time of day you should be training. Endurance training should probably be conducted at the same time of day that performance is scheduled. They also make the point that adequate warm-up should be performed before morning exercise to ensure proper physiological readiness for intense exercise. So if you do have to do a morning workout, it may be beneficial to warm-up for a longer period of time. And in the weeks leading into a big race or event, I would try to train at the same time of day that the race is going to take place, if possible. Let's get back to talking about sleep though, but this time instead of talking about how sleep affects your training, let's talk about how training affects your sleep because it does. And maybe somewhat surprisingly, it's not in a good way. Take this study on prolonged endurance exercise and sleep disruption. Subjects had their sleep studied on four separate occasions. After a day with no exercise, after a 15 kilometer run, after a 42 kilometer run, and after a strenuous ultra triathlon. They found that sleep patterns following the no exercise day, the 15 kilometer run day, and the 42 kilometer run day were similar. However, the sleep pattern after the ultra triathlon day, when compared with the other three days, showed significantly increased wakefulness and delayed and decreased REM sleep. This may come as a surprise to some people. It would seem safe to assume that it would be pretty easy to get a good night's sleep after an ultra endurance event. However, the increased stress from such an event actually has the opposite effect. The same has also been found during hard training periods when athletes start to flirt with overtraining. This study on sleep disturbance in overreached endurance athletes had subjects follow either a normal or overload training program for three weeks. What they found was that in athletes that experienced functional overreaching, sleep quality declined after the training period and then improved again during the taper. It's even been shown that athletes show poorer sleep quality than their non-athletic peers. If you're thinking to yourself, this research doesn't seem to add up. I have no problem sleeping when I'm training hard. Well, your subjective measure of how well you're sleeping may not be the most reliable. This study looking at sleep quality in elite cyclists found that total sleep time and sleep efficiency decreased significantly during the high training phase. In contrast, subjective sleep quality did not differ during high training phases compared to baseline, suggesting that athletes can be inaccurate when assessing their own sleep quality. This is a pretty good argument for using some sort of sleep tracking device to ensure that you are in fact getting the sleep that you need. It's rather inconvenient that the times when you need sleep the most, like during a hard training block or after a taxing ultra endurance event, are also the times when your sleep is most likely to be compromised. That being said, there are things that you can do to improve your sleep quality. For example, this review article on nutritional interventions to enhance sleep in athletes came up with some interesting findings. Diets high in carbohydrates may result in shorter sleep latency or the time it takes you to fall asleep. Diets high in protein may result in improved sleep quality, while diets high in fat may negatively influence sleep time, and when total caloric intake decreases, sleep quality may be disturbed. If you've ever tried to go to bed on an empty stomach, you probably already assumed that reducing your calories affects your sleep. However, the other points about carbs, protein, and fat were more surprising. There are also non-nutritional strategies that you can try as well. This review on sleep recovery and athletic performance states that a generalized recommendation is that athletes need seven to nine hours of sleep per day. However, this will vary between individuals. Elite athletes who train four to six hours a day may require between 10 and 12 hours of sleep per day. A good approach is for athletes to sleep for the amount of time that is required to feel wakeful and alert throughout the following day. This is often easier said than done, but this article goes into some research-backed strategies that you can use to improve your sleep quality. Some of these include going to bed and waking up at the same general time each day, don't use a bedroom clock, avoid coffee and alcohol before bed, avoid watching TV, working, reading, or eating in bed, etc. And while naps can be useful to catch up on missed sleep, they should be limited to 30 minutes and avoided in the late afternoon or evening. And then of course there are the pre-race nerves which often keep people awake the night before a race. As I stated earlier, one night of bad sleep is not as detrimental to your performance as you might think, but it can't hurt to get as much sleep as possible before a big event. Relaxation techniques such as positive suggestion and creative visualization are recommended as part of the sleep routine to ensure a clear mind and relaxed state when going to bed. I've generally found that the more racing I do, the less nervous I get for each race. At this point in my racing career, I have no problem sleeping the night before a race, but there was a time when that was not the case. For beginner racers, the pre-race nerves should dissipate the more races that you do, which is one of many reasons why it's often a good idea to have many B and C priority races before your big A race. Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a like, subscribe for weekly science-based cycling videos just like this one, and share this video with your cycling friends. I'll see you in the next one.