Episode 320: Maximizing Your Sleep - Simple Steps to Improve Sleep for Better Performance
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Welcome to the Purple Patch Podcast. In this week’s episode, IRONMAN Master Coach Matt Dixon delves deep into the subject of sleep. In this episode, we aim to provide you with an action plan to help you improve the quality of your sleep.
If you're an athlete, this episode is crucial as quality sleep is essential for maximizing the benefits of your training. If you're focused on excelling in the workplace, this episode is equally important as sleep can help to stabilize your energy and optimize cognitive function.
First, Matt provides insight into establishing the right mindset towards sleep to develop a realistic approach to implementing changes to your sleep routine. He then breaks down the various stages of a typical night's sleep to give us a better understanding of how sleep impacts our bodies on a physiological level. Finally, Matt provides actionable tips to develop the practices that can help build consistency and establish opportunities for growth, adaptations, and repair.
With these recommendations, we aim to help you achieve high-quality sleep and a baseline level of energy and cognitive function to make the most of your days.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - 03:59 - Welcome and Episode Introduction
04:04 - 07:52 - Coach’s Corner
07:53 - 10:05 - PART 1 - Establishing the Right Mindset
11:17 - 13:57 - Purple Patch Promo
13:58 - 24:28 - PART 2 - Breaking Down the Sleep Cycle
24:29 - 26:07 - Purple Patch Promo
26:08 - 38:03 - PART 3 - Tips & Recommendations
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Full Transcript
Matt Dixon 00:00
Matt. I'm Matt Dixon and welcome to the Purple Patch podcast. The mission of Purple Patch is to empower and educate every human being to reach their athletic potential. Through the lens of athletic potential, you reach your human potential. The purpose of this podcast is to help time-starved people everywhere integrate sports into their lives.
Matt Dixon 00:24
Today we're going to dig into sleep a little bit, which, of course, is your cheapest and easiest performance enhancer if you embrace the practices, many of which we're going to outline in today's show. But what else can you do to control your sustained high performance? Well, it turns out there's a lot. There's a ton. There's so much that it becomes a second job sometimes to even filter through and think about what you should focus on. But there is a way to carve through the noise and understand your biometrics so that you can create focus and prioritize the elements that are going to drive your performance levels. It's a tool called Insidetracker. I leverage it. I like my athletes to leverage it as well. It's very, very simple. By taking a look inside, assessing your biometrics, and then combining them with the advice and action plan from the team of scientists and experts at Insidetracker, you get the precise focus elements that you should focus on so that you can drive all of the key elements of performance success. The best thing is that your results are quantifiable and trackable. Through further reassessments, you can see what's moved the performance dial and also where you need to shift your emphasis for the upcoming phase. It's very, very simple. All you need to do is head to insidetracker.com/purplepatch, and I've got a code for you, of course, purplepatchpro20. Purple Patch Pro 20 gives you a nice, heavy discount on everything at the store. All right, get your pillow out. We're talking about sleep today. Enjoy the show,
Matt Dixon 02:09
And welcome to the Purple Patch podcast as ever, your host, Matt Dixon, and today we're going to do a little deep dive into sleep. Yes, we're going to dive deep so that we can help you create an action plan to improve the quality of your sleep consistently. If you're listening today as an athlete, I think this episode is non-negotiable because, ultimately, we want to help you build the best ROI on your training time. We want you to yield the greatest adaptations from the efforts that you're putting in in training, and we understand that most of those adaptations occur when you're asleep; therefore, quality is important. But on the other hand, if you're listening and you're just simply looking to show your very best in the workplace, then guess what? This episode is equally non-negotiable because we want to help you improve and stabilize your energy and also optimize your cognitive function. In other words, this is a key episode. I always say that sleep is the cheapest and most important performance enhancer for everyone. So let's dig in today. Here's what we're going to go through: First, I want to establish the right relationship with sleep, and so we're going to set up the right mindset that I believe is necessary so that you can implement the practices in a really smart way. Then we're going to dig into a typical night's sleep. What's happening there? What are the important parts? Helping you understand what your body goes through in sleep is going to be a really important catalyst for Part 3 when we set out a set of actionable tips. Now that's all going to be within the context of our new knowledge of what's understanding and going on with our body at sleep. Once we get that done, you should be set and off to the races. But before we get going, we've got some other education to do. Let's do Coach's Corner.
Matt Dixon 04:04
Yes, Team Coaches Corner. We launched this section about two months ago, and I promised that throughout the episodes and shows, I was going to keep you in the loop with our approach, the purple patch, and how we focus our training and education on our athletes as we navigate the arc of the year. Well, it's now July, and so I feel like it's time for a check-in. What's going on? Well, for us to look forward, we first have to look back. Q1 was a phase of preparation. We were doing a lot of habit development at that time, a lot of skills and development work, and we were doing training that was strengthening the tendons, muscles, and ligaments so that we could prepare for the heavy, hard work that was upcoming. In Q2, we started to ramp up the effort. In fact, over the last couple of months or so, we've upped the workload, looking to drive the more central fitness gains, but we've also started to do a lot of work on what we like to call Terrain Management, really ensuring that athletes understand how to interact to get the best speed return relative to the terrain that they're meeting. Beyond terrain management, we've also been doing training management, a key component, so that we can ensure every single athlete under our charge is equipped to manage the demands of life as we start to ramp training up. And we wanted to do this before it got hard and heavy in training load. In other words, trying to develop a little bit of athlete autonomy so that they could guide their ship under the guidance, of course, of the whole Purple Patch coaching team. Now, beyond this, we are also really focused on training support. We did a lot of work with the help of the team from Fuelin, our partners, to ensure athletes were consuming enough calories to support their training load, making sure that daily hydration was positive, ensuring that they had energy throughout the day, and dialing in today's subject sleep. Well, now here we are; we're in Q3. So what do the coming months look like for Purple Patch athletes? For most of the athletes, as they start to venture into race season, that means race specificity. We have a ton of upcoming education on racing mindset, confidence, and, of course, race strategies. We also build a ton of race-specific training—simulators for how to pace in your racing fueling and hydration strategies at race pace—so that people can understand what works for them and start to apply some of the education in an applied setting in training. And then finally, some skills that are specific to race conditions, one example of which is sighting when it comes to swimming. Of course, beyond the physiological side, we're driving resilience and some race-specific readiness. It's certainly a tougher training load, but it's one that our athletes are ready for. We support all of that training with an added emphasis on education from our coaches, community support and accountability, and some expert support. Just yesterday, we had physical therapist Renee Songer lead a session on injury management and avoidance. It was incredibly useful, and of course, the athletes got to ask all the questions that they wanted. And now, well, the races are coming thick and fast. We've already had some stellar breakthroughs and some wonderful stories, many of which I'm going to share on the show. But our athletes, I can tell you, are ready, or at least they're getting ready. And I hope that you're ready too. I hope you're dialed in across all aspects of race readiness instead of just focusing on the workout plan because what you're doing for the training sessions is just one little piece of the puzzle. And so with that, let's shift our focus to sleep. Yes, folks, it's the main topic du jour. That means, Barry, it's time for the meat and potatoes.
Matt Dixon 07:53
Yes, folks, the meat and potatoes. Let's do part one of our mindset on sleep. How do you build the right relationship with sleep? When I started coaching athletes, sleep was something that was ignored in many ways. In fact, in many areas, a lack of sleep was a badge of toughness and commitment. Now it's just a badge of performance stupidity. It's a hot topic. I don't know many people who don't realize or at least appreciate the value of sleep, but still, I see so many people struggling. And so if I'm going to discuss sleep, let me first establish a positive perspective and a mindset around the topic. Building good sleep hygiene is not about perfection. So I'd rather you not approach this as some form of pass-fail endeavor. Here's the headline news, and this is the truth: It's not my opinion; you are going to have some poor, bad nights of sleep. It's going to happen. You can have other nights where you have pretty rough sleep, at least. This can occur for a variety of reasons. Perhaps you've got an accumulation of external stressors. Maybe you've got something looming—a deadline or a major event—and it leads to broken sleep. Perhaps you're traveling across time zones, or there's even a misstep in some of the habits that corrupt your sleep. Maybe you do some afternoon caffeine or a little bit too much alcohol. Perhaps you go big party time, ladies and gentlemen. All of these things occur; it's a part of the fabric of life, and that's okay, because, contrary to the headline news, a bad night's sleep is not a failure. It's not going to limit your performance. We're not seeking perfection here. And so I encourage you to shift your mindset a little bit. And what we're seeking to do is build a practice and an approach that creates a baseline of consistency. Let me outline: there are 365 days in a year, and to be successful with this, you don't need to have 365 nights of good sleep; that's okay. In fact, of those 365 days, you might be doing pretty well if your sleep patterns include something like this: 250 to 300 nights of pretty darn good sleep quality, and that's in terms of quantity and quality. So that's the building block for the majority. That's how we come out of consistency. And then you might have 30, 35, 40 nights or so with pretty disrupted sleep, compromised, and that's relatively frequently two or three times a month. And then perhaps over the year, you have 8, 10, or 12 nights that are just terrible, really poor night's sleep and you start to build up the year. In other words, what we're looking for here is good to great sleep most of the time. That's what success is. And so I would come out of the weeds and look for trends and practices that can build consistency, rather than seeking and looking at every single night as a pass-fail endeavor. If you do that, it's going to drive you bonkers, and it's not necessary to establish the performance gains that we're looking for. As soon as you remove the pass/fail piece of the puzzle, it can be quite liberating. But the question is, with this newfound relationship, how do you go about developing these positive practices where you can, most of the time, have pretty good nights of sleep? Well, first, what we have to do is understand the basics of sleep. What's happening during a night of sleep? We're going to do that in part two.
Matt Dixon 11:17
Let's first have a breather. Let's talk about purple patch coaching and tri-squads. Our expertise at Purple Patch is helping time-starved athletes, just like you, achieve their sporting goals while also improving and thriving throughout life. To accomplish this, we've developed the only program in the world specifically designed for time-starved athletes, and that means you get a dynamic training program that works with your competing demands and flexes to the ebbs and flows of life, and that's the bedrock of it. But beyond that, you also get a team of coaches and experts to filter all of the noise out there, the concepts, and all of the different things that you could focus on, and instead narrow it down to simple, actionable, and effective education that you can apply. This is all in a quest to give you time back and to ensure that the sport doesn't become like a monkey on the back or a second job. Life's already busy as it is, and so it turns out that we do this pretty well. More than 1,500 athletes qualify for world championship events, 1,000 PRs and first-time finishers, and countless people who have, and I say this without any word of exaggeration, transformed how they perform in work and broader life, and you can become a part of it too. All you need to do is reach out to info@purplepatchfitness.com, and we'll set up a complimentary call. We'll understand your situation and goals, and we can have you on plan within minutes. And all of it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. We trust ourselves, and we want you to be a part of the journey. I look forward to working with you. Alright, let's get back to the show.
Matt Dixon 13:58
Yes, folks. Part two: let's break down the sleep cycle. For us to buy in and understand some of the recommendations that I will go through in Part 3, we first have to understand what's going on when we put our heads on that pillow at night until we wake up in the morning. Because with that understanding, it makes a whole bunch of sense why we're recommending the components that we are. So let's go to sleep. If you can just stay with me here, there's a little bit of sciencey stuff, but it's not too complicated at all, and it's a simplified explanation of sleep. You can then go ahead and apply the recommendations that I give you in Part 3 with great confidence. So let's talk about a night's sleep. Okay, now you're going to hear these recommendations. Make sure that you get 7, 8, or 9 hours of sleep every night. Set up the environment so it's cool and dark. Let's talk about the quality of sleep as much as the quantity of sleep. And all those things are true and valuable, but let's dig a little deeper, and let's understand what's going on. So in every night of sleep, you can expect to go through four to seven, what they call cycles of sleep, and each one of these cycles lasts somewhere between 70 minutes and 120 minutes, so just over an hour, up to two hours each one of the cycles, and you're going to go through 4, 5, 6, 7 of them throughout a night, now earlier in the night. So when you first go to bed and over the first two or three hours, these cycles tend to be a little bit shorter, and as the night progresses, the cycles tend to get longer in duration. So that's what's occurring. Each one of these cycles is made up of four stages of sleep, and every one of these stages within each cycle plays an important role in yielding performance benefits and quality of sleep. And so we need to understand the stages of sleep and what their role is relative to you being your best, either as an athlete or just in life, globally. And so let's go through the four very simple stages. Number one is N1. It's a very short phase; it's a transitional phase. Number two is called N2, revolutionary, and that's light sleep. Number three is N3 deep sleep. Now we're going to flag this. This is a really important phase, or stage, of a sleep cycle. This is a very important stage. We're going to dig into that in a couple of moments. And then finally, the fourth is N. No, it's not N; it's called REM. Yes, you've heard of that before. Another key flag is another critical component, and we're going to focus our attention a lot on that as well. So the two real pillars of high-quality sleep are deep sleep and REM. So let's have a few words on each of these stages. So let's go back to the top. N1: This is your shortest stage of sleep. It lasts just a few minutes, somewhere between 3, 4, and 5 minutes, up to about 10 minutes, and this is the phase where you're just falling asleep. You start to get to that very drowsy, lucid phase. It's a transition between being awake and asleep. It is also at the end of one cycle of sleep, which is the transitional phase between the end of REM, so that's our fourth stage of the cycle and the return to the following cycle. So you want to think about this as a transitional phase. In N1, there's not any deep rejuvenation occurring. If you need to get up and go for a pee in the middle of the night, you're typically going to wake up during N1. And so what that means, by the way, just a little tangentially, is that if you have to get up at night and you naturally wake up once or twice to go for a pee, you're probably in N1 sleep. So that doesn't mean that it's compromising your sleep quality at all, because you're in this natural-up phase and you're transitioning. So if you get up, you go to the bathroom, go back to bed, fall asleep relatively quickly, and stay calm. Don't make it an emotional thing. You don't need to overstress. It's not going to interrupt the quality of your sleep throughout the arc of your 6, 7, 8, and 9 hours that you're asleep. So that's N1, okay? That's an important phase, mostly transitional. Then you go to N2, which is light sleep. Now, on any given night, we're going to have a pretty high ratio of total sleep being N2, light sleep, and it isn't discussed that much as a part of sleep, but it still plays an important role because, during light sleep, the body is starting to transition into a relaxed state. This is the phase in which your muscles start to relax. You quite often might twitch a little bit here, and it's a preparatory phase, a little bit like off-season, you could say, for deep sleep and REM sleep. So those stages are coming up towards the back end of the cycle. Alrighty? Now, within light sleep as well, you're also doing some processing. You're starting to embed some memories, and you're starting to ingrain some learning that's going on. You're starting to have a little bit of creativity going on in there. So there is some rejuvenation occurring as part of some important processes. But mostly, it's a transitional phase. You want to think about this as paving the way for the next phase, which, as we'll learn, is a really important phase. And that's N3. This is deep sleep. So why am I flagging deep sleep as being so important? Well, that's because deep sleep is. Where all of your growth, repair, and rejuvenation occur. This is the hotbed of physiological adaptations. So if you're applying stress throughout the day via training, this is where your adaptations to get you, help you, and make you fitter, stronger, and more powerful are occurring. So if you're listening as an athlete here, that deep sleep is your treasure trove right there, because you're getting muscle repair and physiological adaptations; they're all occurring during deep sleep. So we care about that part, but also, from a broader perspective of performance, we're delivering or developing their overall systemic rejuvenation. This is where you're rebuilding and getting a robust immune system that's occurring in deep sleep. It is a critical piece of sleep for developing an overall robust platform of health and energy for the following days. So deep sleep is that growth, repair, adaptations—I think you've got it. Now a little bit more on deep sleep here. For all of us, it doesn't matter whether you tend to be a night owl or a morning lark. For all human beings, assuming that you're adjusted to the time zone that you're in, deep sleep tends to occur between about 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. If you wear any wearable, any tracker at all, you're going to see deep sleep occurring 10, 11, 12, 1, 2, but very, very little, if any at all, after about 2 a.m. It's the same for all of us, and that's a really important component so far as the implications when it comes to our habits and practices, and we're going to dig into them. But remember that deep sleep occurs between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.; that's a good rule of thumb that you can live by. And what does that mean, by the way? Well, if you end up going to bed at midnight, then you're halving your potential for deep sleep, even if you stay in bed for eight hours. You want to think about that when we start getting into recommendations. So that's our third phase, N3, deep sleep. We then enter our final stage, REM, or rapid eye movement. Now we've all heard of REM, and it's not just the band from Athens, Georgia. This is a critical phase of sleep, and it is, as we suggest, the face of dreaming. The best way to think about REM is to say that this is where you're processing stress and anxiety. Throughout the day, from all different sources, we accumulate cortisol and stress hormones. REM is the stage of sleep where we process most of this stress, and what that means is that it has huge implications for stress reduction, mood, cognitive function, and much, much more. So beyond the growth and repair of deep sleep, we care about REM. And here are a couple of things that are important when we consider a night of sleep. As your night of sleep extends into the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth hours, and then each cycle of sleep, the length of the REM stage starts to increase. In other words, when you first fall asleep, the first cycle or two of your REM stage might make up just 10 or 15 minutes of that cycle. But by the end of your third, fourth, fifth, or sixth cycle of sleep, you might start to get 30, 40, 50, or up to 60 minutes of REM. And of course, the longer the piece of REM, the more stress processing you care about. So let's think about that. Think about that. We've got two key components: deep sleep and REM. Deep sleep: growth and repair adaptations. REM occurs more and more and more the longer that you sleep: stress processing, cognitive function, information processing, and ability to process. It's a bit more complicated than that, but this is a simplified way of approaching sleep and starting to analyze whether you're getting good-quality sleep. So with that information now, what we're equipped to do is dig into some recommendations and tips on how you can try and optimize the quality of your sleep with just simple practices and habits. That's going to be in part three.
Matt Dixon 24:29
Alright, let's take a little time out. Today, we're talking about sleep. We're discussing performance. Under the banner of performance, we could also discuss time management, operational effectiveness, nutrition, fueling, hydration, the importance of strength training, mindset, confidence, recovery, and many, many more. The list goes on, and guess what we do discuss? Because when you become a Purple Patch athlete, it's about so much more than a training plan. This is a performance program that is designed for the time-starved athlete to enable you to thrive across every aspect of life—anything that's important to you. Yes, it's about getting you faster as an athlete, but it's also about you showing up and being a better version of yourself, and that's a big part of the reason why, when you become a purple patch athlete, you don't just get a single coach. Instead, you get me; you get the whole Purple Patch coaching team and a host of world experts in performance that have got your back. This is Purple Patch, and I believe this is central to our long-standing results across all levels of athletes and performance enthusiasts. If you're interested in learning how we can help you reach out, pressure-free, at info@purplepatchfitness.com. We'll set up a complimentary call and see if we're a good fit for you and whether you love the program. Well, we're pretty sure you do, but if you don't, we're going to give you money back. Don't worry about that; we back ourselves. Alright, enjoy the show. Part three is coming up. We're going to close this out with some recommendations and tips.
Matt Dixon 26:08
Yes, so are you starting to see the picture here? Deep sleep is really important for adaptations and growth; it occurs between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. REM sleep is equally important: stress processing, the longer stages occurring towards the end of a night's sleep, suddenly you start to realize why we talk about trying to get to bed earlier on, a consistent pattern, and also trying to get eight-plus hours of sleep. That's utopia, so that we can balance every opportunity for growth, adaptations, and repair, as well as the full whack of stress processing. It starts to become pretty simple now. And so this is just information for you to have, and building off of that, let me just give you a few practical tips. There is much more than what I'm going to outline today, but at least this can get you going—some practical steps that you can start to move yourself towards. Remember, not 365 days of every year pass and fail; get great sleep every night. That's not the real world, but at least moving toward 300 of those 365 days is pretty darn good. We're going to have a particular focus here on trying to improve the consistency of the quality and length of deep sleep and REM every night. So the first tip, of course, is to go to bed at the same time every night. There's always going to be a little plasticity, but within a 30-minute window, consistently, most times if you can go to bed at the same time, ideally before 10 p.m. for obvious reasons now so that we can maximize the opportunity of deep sleep, the body loves the predictable patterns. It loves consistency, so a regular bedtime is really valuable. And if you do get to bed before 10 p.m. Well, therefore, you're going to maximize your potential for deep sleep. And therefore, with this habit, you can consider yourself a very cool kid. You can even use my mantra: nothing good happens after 10 p.m. I'm not sure if that was the original, but that's what I do now as an old man. Number two, of course, is to set up your environment. It's going to help with deep rejuvenation. And so yes, there is some real credence to this cool and dark environment. The reason that this is important is that it helps the body get to a deeply restorative state, making it easier to find those longer stages of deep sleep and rejuvenation. If the body's sweating and trying to cool down, it's just not going to be able to get into deep rejuvenation. So a cool and dark environment is optimal to help the body get that deep rest. And then, of course, on the flip side, when you wake up in the morning, kickstart your circadian rhythm—as quickly as you can get into bright light. Now that it's summer months up here in the northern hemisphere, therefore, ideally getting outside, a wonderful thing, daylight, triggers it. But if nothing else, or if you're down in the southern hemisphere right now, get the lights on and tell the brain, Hey, it's time to wake up. That's going to set the clock so that in 12, 14, and 16 hours, you're going to start to wind down again. Pretty simple stuff: environment, timing, and light management. Number three, the kitchen closes at 7 p.m., is very simple. If you want to maximize deep sleep between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., you don't want the body at work when you're trying to get to deep sleep. In other words, you don't want the body to digest food from a big meal that's consumed right before bed. It's the habit of many people to eat dinner at 8:30 or 9 p.m., and then, even if they do go to bed at 10 p.m., they're just not able to get into deep sleep. And that's because the body's working—it's digesting food. So if we bring that large, major meal back and start to eat it at least two but hopefully not more, like three to four hours before you go to bed, you're going to clear the digestion, and then you're going to get into deep sleep in a better way. Now, it doesn't mean zero calories. If you are training heavily, you can consume a little bit of protein, like Greek yogurt, right before bed. There's nothing wrong with that; it's not going to have a massive impact. I'm talking about the big meal—your primary dinner. Have that at least three hours before you go to bed. It makes sense; we don't want the body working while we're trying to get it to rest and recuperate. Tip number four: don't sabotage yourself. I'm talking about things that you do that are going to directly impact the quality of your sleep, the length of your deep sleep, and, of course, your REM. Now there are a couple of simple things here that tend to sabotage people's quality of sleep. Number one: too much alcohol. Number two is afternoon caffeine. We don't want the body to be stressed. Alcohol tends to have a lot of sugar. It disrupts sleep quality. And so if you are going to choose to have alcohol, particularly in the week when you're looking to get up for work or training the next day, if you are going to have it, make sure you have it well early enough, 4, 5, 6 pm, not 8, 9, 10 pm, before bed, because at least that way the body can process it, and you can come down to get good quality sleep. More than one drink—well, it's going to disrupt your sleep. It's a choice that you have to make, but it will. And then, for afternoon caffeine, we have to remember that caffeine has a half-life of about eight hours. So what a half-life is once I drink that cup of coffee? For example, it's going to take about eight hours until it leaves the body and there's no impact. So if I'm having a cup of coffee at 4 p.m. and then going to bed at 9 or 10 p.m., I'm going to have a hard time getting into deep sleep because the body is still feeling the impact of that caffeine, which is, of course, a stimulant. And so that's some of the context behind that recommendation. And then finally, tip number five: build a wind-down routine. Now, there are a couple of things that you can do here that help. If you can just glide your way, I like to call it landing the plane smoothly. The first is that if you're busy and time-starved, particularly if you're a working professional or a leader, it's really valuable to map your following day before you go to bed. We talk a lot about this show about the Sunday special, mapping the week, but quite often before you go to bed, just spend 10 or 15 minutes thinking about the next day, what you're going to get done, and writing it down. It gives you a sense of control. It reduces anxiety, and it's a really good practice. Quite often, when you've gone through and you've mapped your day, it's much less likely that one o'clock in the morning you'll wake up with a stressful dream. Oh my God, I need to remember to do this tomorrow. You can just stay calm and allow yourself to wind down. The second component is a really good recommendation: read a book right before bed. Now, I much prefer the books before bed to be unrelated to anything in your professional life. Instead, allow it to be a transitional time, a time that you're just giving it a little bit of brain candy—in other words, turning the brain down and removing it from the demands that you have in your life. An example of mine, a Scandinavian crime thriller, takes me a while to read a book for a couple of months because I lay down, and read for 5, 10, or 15 minutes, my eyes are drowsy, and I'm off to sleep, but at least it helps me shut my brain down from all of my competing demands. Now, I should point out that it's not all Scandinavian crime thrillers. I've got a broader range. I'm not immune from a really crap ex-CIA agent who's now become a disgruntled warrior out there for vengeance or anything like that. I know it's pretty rubbish, but it does serve as nice brain candy. There's a lot more to these recommendations and tips, but I hope that that helps you connect the dots between what's going on and why we're recommending these components to try and at least build good habits. It's a good starting point. Go to bed at a regular time, hopefully before 10 p.m.; avoid caffeine and alcohol as much as possible; set your environment up; and have a wind-down protocol. It's all going to help you. And then, of course, on the nights that you can, if you want to show up the next day, at least seven, but hopefully eight hours, that's where you're going to process all the stress and optimize your ability to bring your best the next day with information processing, clarity of thinking, and ability to focus. You're going to be more productive the next day. One more word: all of the latest research has revealed a surprising find, and that's that screens before bed do not disrupt sleep. Pretty shocking news, yeah? That's right. Research shows that looking at an iPad screen, a laptop screen, or a TV screen does not interrupt your sleep quality. But the one little asterisk there is what can happen when dopamine hits if you're spending all your time on things like TikTok or something that's going to stimulate the body. And so, in other words, it's much, as much, in my opinion, about what's on the screen. But the key finding is that the blue light coming out of that screen doesn't compromise sleep. So use your screens; it's fine, different than what we've been told, as long as you're being smart about what you're watching or what you're reading. Alright, guys, I hope that helps. When you set up this practice, you've got a super chance of mostly good-quality sleep and a baseline of energy and cognitive function to make the most of your days. I hope that helps. If you'd like to learn more about sleep or Purple Patch, reach out at info@purplepatchprocess.com, but until next time, take care.
Matt Dixon 36:31
Guys, thanks so much for joining, and thank you for listening. I hope that you enjoyed the new format. You can never miss an episode by simply subscribing. Head to the Purple Patch channel on YouTube, and you will find it there, and you can subscribe. Of course, I'd like to ask you, if you will subscribe, to also share it with your friends, and it's really helpful if you leave a nice positive review in the comments. Now, if you have any questions, let me know. Feel free to add a comment, and I will try my best to respond and support you on your performance journey. As we commence this video podcast experience, if you have any feedback, as mentioned earlier in the show, we would love your help in helping us to improve. Email us at info@purplepatchfitness.com, or leave it in the comments of the show on the purple patch page, and we will get you dialed in. We'd love constructive feedback. We are in a growth mindset, as we like to call it, so feel free to share with your friends. But as I said, let's build this together. Let's make it something special. It's really fun. We're trying hard to make it a special experience, and we want to welcome you into the Purple Patch community. With that, I hope you have a great week. Stay healthy, have fun, keep smiling, do whatever you do, and take care.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
sleep, athletes, deep sleep, bed, patch, purple, performance, occurring, rem, phase, body, night, work, training, stages, n1, practices, quality, starved, recommendations