Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #14 The Sleep Hacking Secrets of the World’s Top Athletes with Nick Littlehales

Episode Date: April 18, 2018

Dr Chatterjee talks to elite sports sleep coach and author of the book Sleep: The Myth of 8 Hours, the Power of Naps... and the New Plan to Recharge Your Body and Mind about his unique journey to coaching world famous sports teams, on improving performance through sleep patterns and on daily actionable tips for everyone. Show notes available at drchatterjee.com/nicklittlehales Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee/ Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee/ Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, my name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, medical doctor, author of The Four Pillar Plan and BBC television presenter. I believe that all of us have the ability to feel better than we currently do, but getting healthy has become far too complicated. With this podcast, I aim to simplify it. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most interesting and exciting people both within as well as outside the health space to hopefully inspire you as well as empower you with simple tips that you can put into practice immediately to transform the way that you feel. I believe that when we are healthier, we are happier because when we feel better, we live more. better, we live more. My guest today is somebody who goes by the title of an elite sports sleep coach, but I hope it's going to provide a very different perspective on sleep because this is someone who has been heavily involved in trying to improve sporting performance by improving the quality of people's sleep. He's author of the book Sleep.

It is Mr. Nick Littlehales. Nick, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much. Great to be here. Nick, I first came across your book, I think, probably at the time of its release in October 2016. Right. I remember devouring it on the train home.

Okay. Back from London. Really, really interesting. And the thing which really struck me, which I think is where i'm going to start the conversation today is that you started off being the international sales and marketing director of slumberland which is the largest sleeping comfort group in europe in the late 90s um how did you get from being sales and marketing director of a sleep company to sort of coaching the likes of wine gigs and david beckham in terms of how they should be proving their sleep

to be honest with you um i sometimes reflect on that myself because it's uh you know what's covered off in the book it's um a story that people are quite interested in not only because of the subject sleep but also exactly as you you pointed out. I started off as a sales representative for this company, Slumberland. They're a very big branded company. And in about six years, I became their sales and marketing director. It meant that I could travel around the world and watch everybody sleeping and involved in different countries and all sorts of things. And along the whole time I was doing it, I always heard this word, you know, sleep was taken for granted.

We knew that the consumers, the population, knew how important sleep was, but all the information that I'd come across was very sort of not really reflective of our own personal lives you know get eight hours a night and get to bed early or don't eat too late and there was nothing really too specific so I was just sat in my office in the UK which happened to be Oldham Manchester I had already handed my notice in to go off and do something different because maybe a little bit of a midlife crisis in my early 40s and just disillusioned with why sleep was just not a great subject,

not a great thing in the well-being world and all those sort of areas. I'd had a little bit of an engagement with a local football club called Oldham Athletic where I signed a check to sponsor their shirt, which was quite interesting in those days. So what year would that have been in? Oh, 96, 7. Okay. I think that's where the name Sunderland's coming back to me from. Yeah, yeah.

Was it on the shirt? Yeah, yeah. So this local club, I did it because most of the workforce in the factory in the UK were Oldham Athletic supporters. Right. So it was nice to put the company's name on the shirt. But the media and press in those days, I mean, sponsored shirts now are just you can have anything you want on it. But in those days, it was quite specific.

So the media really, you know, took the mickey out of Oldham Athletic because they've got this bed company sleep. So they had them all sleeping in the centre circle, sleeping in the goals. Anyway, Oldham Athletic, like a number of clubs around that area, were breeding grounds for Manchester United players. So there was a little bit of a connection, but not much. And I just thought, right, I've got nothing to do for a year, rolling out my director's contract,

so I'll just write to Manchester United. They're just down the road, and I'll ask them, what do they do about sleep? And it was literally nothing more than that. I think the operative thing there was I wrote to them because in the bedding industry, we were really late adopters to technology. So in our factory, the accounts department would have computers,

but the sales team wouldn't have mobile phones and laptops or anything like that. So I do reflect that back then, I was an international sales and marketing director traveling around the world with thousands and thousands of staff in all different countries without a phone or anything. So I think when I wrote to Manchester United, Alex Ferguson was the manager. He wrote back saying he'd asked a question to all his staff and they do nothing. Now, instead of just going, well, we do nothing, so there's no need to talk to you about anything, he was intrigued.

So I got asked to go into the club to speak to the physio, which was a guy called Dave Fever. And he'd got a problem with a centre-half called Gary Pallister, where they wrapped him in cotton wool. He wouldn't train, wouldn't do anything, because of lower back issues. I remember clearly I was a avid football fanatic at the time. He just became intrigued

because obviously my competence really from that letter was in bedding products because of my position in the company. So to cut that a little shorter I just went along and had a look at what this player was sleeping on at home because the

physio was worried that while he was treating the player inside the training ground when the player went away he came up with this word debilitating so he's rehabilitating when he's with the physio and debilitating driving his ferrari home and whatever he's sleeping on for many hours so i just checked it out classically he'd got a rock hard orthopedic chiropractically endorsed thing. And I just changed that to something I thought was more suitable to his body profile and encourage him to sleep in the right positions. Now we did that. We didn't solve his back problem, but there were noticeable improvements. So the physio became even more intrigued. So whilst this was going on,

I was also downloading all my knowledge about sleep, going, why do we do this? Why can't we do that? And so I started to, they asked me to talk to attend the training ground and just be available in the players' lounge. And if any of the players want to come and talk to me about products because he told them that i could improve things for them physically the only person who came up

to see me was ryan gigs and ryan gigs at that time was somebody who was really interested in other areas of recovery and well-being and so i did something with r Ryan in his home and everything else and then you know along that route suddenly I was talking to him about sleep and we started to look at other things a new physio came in called Rob Swire who you know throughout his whole career at Manchester United we became great friends and we started doing things with Rob like for the first time ever I mean we're still in the 90s here for the first time ever Alex Ferguson decided that he wanted to train in the pre-season period both in the morning and the afternoon which was a first right so what happened was is what do we do with the players in between the two training sessions and rather than having them lying around on sofas and playing games and whatever we actually decided to i suggested that they we took a room inside the training room we cleared

it out we put in lounging products and we encouraged all the players to actually go in there and what you would all know about is take a nap take a sleep recovery period. Now, that's the first recovery room probably ever. And that was certainly the first recovery room in sport. And just imagine, we're talking 1997-98. No mobile phones. Most of these players were UK born. So David Beckham, Ryan Giggs, the Neville brothers, Paul Scholes, the class of 92,

if anybody's interested in Manchester United. They also just went and did something quite remarkable called Winner Treble. And in the dying minutes of a game against Bayern Munich, so there was a lot of focus on Manchester United at that time, purely by accident.

I support Aston Villa. It was nothing to do with my relationship with that club just a professional engagement yeah alex ferguson was really intrigued about all the things that we were doing and just wrote me a quote one day saying you know what you're doing is absolutely brilliant nick you know and um there's no sports science people around or anything. So just imagine back then with young lads, biggest club on the planet at that time, treble winning team. And we're talking to them about sleeping in between training sessions. And so that was just a really dramatic moment. And the way that came to pass is because the access to their training ground, as always, at the far gates, there are the media trying to catch pictures of the players and managers.

So one of them just went, who is this person we see quite regularly? Not a player, not an agent. No. Who is he? And the guys on the internal gate, because, you know, I turn up and go, i'm nick little hails um i'm here to see rob spire and and they just picked up that i'm something to do with sleep and talking to the players about sleep so they had no problem telling the media at the gate that oh it's just somebody talking to the players about sleep you know what's that about? So they just took the word coach, which is familiar in sport.

They took the word sleep. And they just wrote in the papers, Manchester United have got a sleep coach. Tucking them in and reading bedtime stories, no doubt. And it was all mickey take because it was just ridiculous to think that Manchester United footballers needed help with sleep. And that's it, really. It's an incredible story.

And, you know, you're talking about the late 90s, and we're in 2018, so let's say 20 years ago, just over 20 years ago, right? Given how prevalent talk about sleep is today in society, you know, we're getting this um increased awareness aren't we i think the public are getting increased awareness of the importance of sleep and how we've neglected it and probably for sometimes the wrong reasons yeah absolutely but but it's incredible only 20 years ago probably one of the most uh what's the word i'm looking for

wealthiest sports in the world i I would argue. Premier League football. Yeah. And some of the top clubs, it's hard for me as someone who grew up in Cheshire and did not support Manchester United. How I phrase this, particularly we've not gone into the injury time and how that was an outrageous amount of injury time when they won the treble.

But that's a separate story altogether. They have a term for that don't they they do yes um but if i get back on topic on sleep it is incredible how in just that short time frame in fact i find it staggering to think that nobody these athletes were not prioritizing sleep and how you literally were doing your job you know you you sponsor the local team oldham athletic um you know everyone thinks it's a bit funny a bit of a joke you know i can only imagine the headlines if ever oldham let a goal in or an own goal or they've gone to sleep and you know i can only imagine what sort of headlines there may have been but from just writing a letter sir alex ferguson responds to you goes oh we don't know much about that you know come in let's let's talk about that it's just incredible to me

says i think the if if the slumlands uk office was anywhere else anywhere else at that time because as you pointed out no sports science very little data collection you know nothing was there no no manager or anybody would have responded to a letter just saying what do you do in sleep they'd have just gone we do nothing thanks very much i mean it's time and place that wouldn't happen today no no you'd have to show oh i've got this data this is what i've shown you just wouldn't happen today would it no no and so but i think this whole relationship at the time, like I said, you know, pretty much 80 plus percent of the team were UK born. So they were all part of a little family. They'd come through the ranks, these class of 92.

And principally, whatever Alex wanted to do, then the staff and everybody just went, we'll do it. alex wanted to do yeah then the staff and everybody just went we'll do it and so what a unique set of circumstances uh to actually me be next to that club with that manager with that set of circumstances and he was very open to let's find out about it you know rather than just shutting the door and arguably that's probably one of the reasons he was so successful, maybe, because he was open and, you know, up for embracing these sort of things. And he was always at the forefront. There was another manager called Sam Allardyce, who was at Bolton at the time, and they were quite close friends.

And Sam was also one of these people who was, you know, if somebody came in and they've got something different, if it was relevant, they'd look at it. What to know about it. Whereas other, you know, even clubs that I might go to now won't take that approach because they still think back in the era of a clip around the ear, I'll just get out on the pitch and do your stuff sort of almost Georgie Best type thing.

But that was a unique thing. So when we actually, when I said we should create a room to help them sleep in between training sessions this is midday right he just went right okay i like i like what you're saying to me so we'll make it happen so when i said to the players you need to do this they didn't turn around and say i won't do that they just went okay let's have a go show us what to do nick and we'll try it. And what did they do? They did it.

So tell me, you've got this, they've created this room with the purpose of, you know, passing the time between morning training sessions and afternoon training sessions. You have recommended to this huge club that the players potentially should be taking a nap. I'm laughing as we say this. I'm just going through it in my head. So I'm thinking, okay.

I almost think, did that actually happen? Yeah, it's incredible. So obviously the manager who had a lot of, certainly from the press reports, had a lot of autonomy at the club to sort of make decisions. He was on board. He says, right, we'll get this room set up. So what does that room look like? What did you have in the room? There was nothing it was just it was a room where they had

some storage they had some desks they had somebody working there doing administration but it was big enough to get sort of 10 or 12 lounges in there um so we cleaned it out so it was just a normal room like we're sat in the studio today it wasn't specific to recovery or we didn't have beds in well i i sourced a product which was like a a single lounger so they could put it in different positions rather than a bed because i think that would have gone too far um and we had 12 of those in the room. And so that they could all go into that room and just curl up on it. So I had to then give them, you know, how do you nap, right? So I had to, well, I know that, so I'll do that.

So suddenly my language was not only product-orientated, but also then became sleep-orientated. And what they did, it wasn't too scientific i have to say but what they noticed that certain people certain players as they were taking that recovery period and whether they fall into sleep or not there seemed to be benefits so even if even if one of the players didn't actually fall asleep they were in mental and physical recovery just lying there what What benefits? Well, when they looked at data in the afternoon,

maybe a sprint between A and B over 30 meters, they could see that if they didn't go and nap, maybe it was a little slower in the afternoon than it was in the morning. And it was tiny little things like that. And also, the people who did it seemed to be more alert and aware and happy in the afternoon whereas the ones who didn't were sort of carrying the effects of the morning right this is absolutely incredible because you've gone there from your sleep company um without a load of data and science and let's say to back up what you're

suggesting absolutely and i'm not a doctor or an academic in sleep at all yeah you've you've achieved great things and you've you've managed to show an industry the benefits of doing this which i which i think is fantastic and on a separate scale as you know i think i think qualifications fine they can be important but they're not always important because some of this is common sense, right? Some of this is just common sense. You don't need to necessarily get a degree in common sense to apply some common sense. All right, thank you. And, you know, it's remarkable to me that,

and the reason I'm going to bring this up is because people listening to this may be thinking, well, yeah, it's all right for Premier League footballers. But how does that apply to me? Well, let's just think about what you just said for a minute. For those people who took that nap or that recovery period, let's say, so they weren't always falling asleep, having that physical and mental recovery, their performance was improved. Obviously, in a footballer, the speed the the speed uh you know of sprinting is is you know very important parameter to measure yeah right but you know people listening might be working in an office or might be working you know in other environments you know your performance

their attention their concentration would also be improved by recovery periods let let's say. And this has lots of crossover benefits, I think, for the general public. Oh, yeah. What are some of those? What have you gleaned in 20 years, let's say, at least, of being involved in elite sport and advising on sleep? What can the layman on the street learn from that?

I think just very quickly to sort of bring that story to date, part of that squad played for the national squad, England national squad. So when they went to the national squad, they started to raise questions about things that they were learning in Manchester United that wasn't reflective in the England set-up. There was a physio who looked after the England squad,

a guy called Gary Lewin, who was also shared with Arsenal Football Club. So Gary just went, hang on a minute, they're asking these questions, called me and my friend Andy Olno, who was the marketing sponsorship manager for England at the time, also, you know know we had dialogue and gary said will you come into arsenal and do what you're doing and i went well i i don't

actually know what i'm doing to be honest because i'm still a director you know in under contract for another three or four months um you want me to come and speak to the whole arsenal football team in conference style about sleep? Me. Right. He said, yeah. Now, the weird thing about that moment was there was a French manager who had just arrived. Yeah. And he was thinking about aromatherapy and take your shoes off and sounds.

And he was a completely different manager to anybody else who'd ever come near the. So open minded, I'm guessing, towards sleep. Now, there's another moment, you see, because Gary just said to Arsene Wenger, I want to bring this guy in, and it's about sleep, and he just went, fantastic. Now, another moment where if that manager, it's so different to everybody else,

that it meant that I could do that. So I had to adopt the title of, I am a football sleep coach. Well, I won't use football, but somebody said, why not elite? Because we are elite clubs. I said, okay, I'll be an elite sportsman. And then I had to sit down and think,

how am I going to keep male-dominated, high-profile Arsenal footballers. The other key thing here was that the players were for different parts of the world. Whereas Manchester United, it was more UK-centric. We had Fabregas, Thierry Henry, Adi Bayour, Thomas Rizzi, Gael Clichy, Cech. So obviously you talk about Fabregas, Spanish. Yeah.

Spain have a culture of naps. That's right. Did you find that different nationalities were more or less receptive? Was there anything there at all? Oh, there's lots of things went on. And it's only, at the time time it was just problem solving because I suddenly thought, well, I don't want to talk to them about sleep because their perception of it has got no value. Just go to bed and see you in the morning type of thing. So I knew that sleep is basically measured in a 90-minute period in a clinical situation with all the

professors I knew. You look at the data of all the sleep stages over 90 minutes and then look at another set of 90 minutes. So I thought, right, so five 90-minute cycles is 7.5 hours. So that's a bit more definitive than eight hours randomly. 90 minutes is the length of a football game with a gap in between for recovery. So I thought, okay, I'll use that. We'll think in cycles rather than hours and we'll talk breaks. And so what I did is I created the seven areas that a player could look at. And if they made a little change in each of those little seven areas then they would improve their approach redefine their approach to sleep and while i was doing that i mean that first that first workshop with all the players because they were all compulsory had to come was a bit of fun

you know the some of the players in there were just what on earth are we doing in here um but there's always somebody like thierry on and re anybody in a club like that they just stand up and go calm down we're here to learn right so let's let's just calm it down but your point there was interesting because says fabregas spain you know doesn't do anything between 1 and 3 most times. As in he's just sort of cultured? Well, that's the culture. Exactly. Spain doesn't go to sleep between 1 and 3.

Some people think that. They're still an active country, but basically between 1 and 3, they try not to do things. It's downtime, right? It's downtime. So having him train in the morning and then train in the afternoon

that's not comfortable so you could see him not training in the afternoons pre-season he'd be sat there you know eating broccoli if it was between 1 and 3 he wouldn't be training that's where it would be you see and the other thing was

he was quite happily chatting to his family and his friends at 12 o'clock at night and they're all in a restaurant with the kids because they stay up later. So there was a lot of things going on around the club with the different nationalities and cultures that suddenly meant that my conversation about sleep and recovery started to build because of these things.

Was that challenging? Because let's say you've got a Spanish player who is used to staying up late about sleep and recovery started to build because of these things was that challenging because like let's say you've got a spanish player who is used to staying up late but also having some downtime between 1 p.m and 3 p.m yet maybe some of his british colleagues or colleagues from other nationalities sorry from other countries may not be doing that um did that pose challenges when trying to make it uniform as to you know also football club need to try and sleep like this yeah i i the challenges were just enormous because but i think that's why i constantly try to find a language um try to make it a little bit more

relevant so we could actually talk like says fabregas is on a five cycle routine he's on a three cycle routine i'm on a six cycle routine he's on a three cycle routine i'm on a six cycle routine i love it you started so they started to think like that rather than just go to bed for eight hours i i just you know i just investigated um has the human being ever slept in a different way than just eight hours at night. And you only have to look back to the 1700s, when we invented electric light, that humans never slept in long blocks. It was always a multiphasic approach called polyphasic.

So they'd sleep for shorter periods more often. Sometimes, some of those polyphasic approaches were really multiphasic. I mean, it's like 30 minutes every six hours or four hours i mean there's uh lots of things you look so i thought that's interesting so if i look at the team and you've got these different cultures and you look at the schedules of what they're being asked to do if they literally went on to a four or five cycle routine but we don't try and get it all at night we actually use as i found out the other second natural sleep period is is around midday between one ish three ish wherever you are

on the planet where it's completely natural for us as human beings just to zone out and maybe take a bit of a kip there's another one early evening between five and seven and i thought wow that would make it a hell of a lot easier for says fabregas to deal with his schedule and maybe the manager will understand that and maybe they can have a 30 minutes respite and then go out training and in early evening so so did you did you basically set up a series of, we want to get, as you said, it was a really beautiful way you put it, you know, these 90-minute sleep cycles. And if you do, what is it, five of those? That's seven and a half hours.

That's seven and a half hours. And is that where the line on the front cover of your book, The Myth of Eight Hours, comes from? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's... Because it wasn't me sort of trying to to break the mold or go against the academic side of course when you look at any 24-hour period as a human being you know eight hours in recovery is probably the healthy option yeah but that's it so we're not

we're not reducing that down we're just saying 5 90 minute cycles 7.5 hours in a day so would you with these with the with the with the players that you were coaching or advising would would the advice be look we need to in this 24-hour period you need to try and get 5 90 minute cycles whether you choose to get them in the evening in the afternoon afternoon, or get them whenever you want. And do you know what I like about that, Nick? And I'm sort of guessing that people listening to this, some people may really resonate with that. Because there's a lot of pressure, I think, put on people to get their deep eight hours in every night. And I often give the advice you know routine is very important but you know modern life makes routine quite tricky for some people shift workers in

particular which is it which is a separate issue but even just breaking it down simplistically that there are these 90 minute cycles just try and get five in in every 24 hours you know that's that might be more palatable to a lot of people i think when somebody you know when you i've never met anybody who sleeps eight hours in one block without any awakenings 365 days of the year people wake up in the middle of the night can't get back to sleep they they try to sleep for eight hours but wake up early and do this and do that they wake up two or three times so when you're actually looking at it you may be allocating an eight hour period with probably half an hour to an hour beforehand putting your pjs on and then in the morning half an hour to

hour waking yourself up so this is more like 10 or 11 hours right allocated to something that most people wake up in the morning and they don't feel refreshed and they use caffeine and the stimulant they've got to go on this is not a performance criteria it doesn't matter how you've slept no sleep at all you will still wait you'll still start your day and go and do what you need to do so this relationship with when you start to think in a polyphasic way and you look at the circadian rhythms and how we're in harmony and pattern with that. And if you go too far away from it, which we're doing, which we're mad, then there is quite a natural thing within that 24 hour clock that around two or three o'clock, you are likely as a a human being, to have gone through enough deep sleep stages, so it's quite natural, like the Victorians did before the light bulb,

to wake around that time, go and see a neighbour, do some stuff, and then go back to sleep again. So once somebody understands that waking up at two o'clock in the morning and feeling quite awake is completely natural, they become positive. They stop worrying. It takes the pressure off. Absolutely.

It takes the pressure off. Because that anxiety and worry is a problem in itself, isn't it? And then suddenly when you started to see that the football teams were now doing night games at court to eight, not getting back to there, then all the media in 24 started to crawl so they're not even getting home to this. I guess what you're illustrating there is that you have had to adapt and innovate with your strategies

to allow that the footballers or the sportsmen you're working with to get their recovery time around more and more challenges absolutely that are existing and it's really interesting you know you you what's really striking for me is that you started this uh work with footballers in the 1990s yeah you make me feel old whatever what i tell you what what it's interesting 20 years ago now isn't it but those 20 years have seen an incredible amount of change in society.

Mind-blowing. Arguably some of the biggest change we've ever seen. And so 20 years ago, we didn't really, and of course someone might correct me if I'm not technically correct on this, but I think it's fair to say that mobile phones were not the norm like they are today. Oh, no, no, no. Right? mobile phones were not the norm like they are today.

Oh, no, no, no. Right? So have you had to evolve your advice over the past 20 years to take into account modern technology? And then, as you say, the 24-hour media cycles that now exist. Because let's say a player has got an 8 o'clock kickoff game in the Champions League, let's say. And let's say it all runs to time-ish and the game finishes around 9.50, 9.55 by the time,

you know, it's the time and everything's been played. You know, obviously there's the adrenaline rush of playing, the kind of euphoria, all that emotional excitement. And then some players obviously then have to go and do press interviews afterwards in bright lights which again wakes you up yeah um it's going to take quite a long time for those players i'm guessing for some of them to actually start to wind down and be in a state that they could even sleep in the first place so do you then have to tweak your advice or is that when your 90-minute cycles comes in very handy? Yeah, I think all that's happened is that, you know, as we said along with the story,

I started to look at these things and develop them because of what I was trying to solve in front of me. And that's progressively become more relevant as each year has passed than it was then right so i got involved with the england squad in euro 2004 it was in portugal they were only in one hotel for the whole period so they were just traveling to games which was unusual so they could take this hotel over so i got asked to take over the hotel and so we chose rooms for the players because of the sun coming up and the sun coming down and temperature we looked at so you you would choose you would choose rooms based upon where the sun was rising yeah yeah because this because some of the rooms with the hotel the sun had come

up and it would you know pile heat into rooms, but not the ones at the back. And then as it goes over, it does the opposite. So we had curtain-shutting protocols. I went all around the hotel with Dr. Leif Sward and Sven-Goran Eriksson's doctor, and it was just fascinating. So literally what happened was we profiled the players, you know, height, weight, height weight shape allergies you name it and i checked all the products in the hotels and they were all classic hotel stuff of course not designed for elite athletes and then i designed some products we put them on a ship took them to portugal took them into the hotel rooms and we

basically set up david beckham's room or you know the england players and it was literally like that and we told them you know how to you know keep the curtains shut temperature in the room we looked at the product so we put little toppers on it took our own linen out there took our own bedding i mean the hotel manager at the time was just looking at me as if i was some sort of sci-fi crazy alien bloke. Because the thing was, they've already paid for these rooms, haven't they? And the rooms have got bathroom and beds and everything. Lovely.

So why are you bringing your own stuff? And I think what happened then from that, so there was another area that people are going, what on earth are you doing? Well, that isn't a room for an elite athlete to recover in. It's a hotel room, you know? So back in 2004, and, you know, weirdly enough, I was at that same tournament. So was I. I was in the stand when Zinazine Zidane ruined our moment.

Was that the quarterfinal? I think it was the first game, wasn't it? Well, I flew out with my brother for the semi-final because I tried to predict where England would get to but England got knocked out in the quarter-finals so I think we went out to see

Portugal v Holland I think Portugal v the Netherlands so I was actually randomly in Lisbon flying out with my brother We may have walked past each other a long time ago We may well have done. But what is interesting for me is 2004, you're already telling me that this was not commonplace

in Premier League football, right? So you'd done Man United. You were also invited to Arsenal. And I imagine sports teams, particularly elite sports teams, don't really share their secrets around because everyone's trying to get a gain on their opponents. But at a big tournament such as Euro 2004, did you get a sense that any other teams were focusing on sleep in the same way that you guys were no it's just it was just completely when you put those things together that you know if mantis united are talking to this guy if gary lewin who's also the england squad he's doing something i mean when you say doing something you know we weren't sort of taking over the whole program it was just like learning and what did the players feedback did they find it

useful i think they they certainly i think sometimes when you measure something the best reaction is no reaction yeah yeah because they actually said well how's all this is it improving what you're doing said well i'd rather have it than not because i took all the stuff off and just did it with the hotel and it really is more comfortable and if doing that sort of stuff is affecting me that's fine but i'm not actually measuring it i mean for me it's absolutely remarkable well before before i go into this we what we could be here all day we would could be and has this do you think this is changing in top level sports oh yeah because you know just the next bit that came along. So I'm looking at these seven little areas where I can go into with a player and go,

let's do that, let's do that, let's check this, check that. And it's all about education about the circadian rhythms, their personal chronotype, their sleep characteristic, sleeping in cycles rather than hours, pre and post sleep routines. Then you've got a better balance between activity and recovery because they get do too much and then you've got sleeping environments and sleeping products so there's the areas sleeping products sleeping products what's the sleeping product oh

mattresses and pillows got it and bedding because you know that was a bit of my it was my opportunity to destroy the myths of how people approach these products but anyway um british cycling got challenged to make cycling uh famous in the uk to win gold medals on the track and road male and female and also to put a british rider on the tour de france podium within five years and we're all encouraged to ride our bikes around the uk and rent bikes to healthy so you make cycling famous and it'll help the health of the country and so they had a thing called the aggregation of marginal gains i know it well yeah everybody knows it now so they brailsford and the best coaches on the planet were given money to sort

of put this together to make cycling famous and in the aggregation of marginal gains when you're showing people how to wash their hands properly uh they check the carpet pile they'd have to check everything to look for these little one percent extra factors well they couldn't ignore sleep so the only person who was wandering around with anything sort of relevant to was I was actually aggregating the marginal gains in sleep. So I got involved with them. And suddenly everything I was doing suddenly had a pathway and a map. And it came together. So it became the arm.

So you were involved with British Cycling? Yeah, very, 2008, 2009. Wow. They were in Manchester at the Velodrome. We went in and they just said right Nick's gonna do sleep for us and because we went on grand tours like the Giro d'Italia Team Sky was born at that time so there was a lot of money around with Sky and literally we we went through those seven areas with each rider and that culminated in actually putting

sleeping products inside a kit bag and taking it on a grand tour because for all those things back in Euro 2004 we said hang on a minute, when we're on tour, we're out there for two or three weeks, riding every day we're in different hotels every night, that's

not designed for our riders. So, are you suggesting that what that rider's got in their home these layers and your kit we'll put it in a bag and take it yeah and they went okay and we i designed the products put them on the floor in the velodrome all the coaching staff and dave got down on it and went i'll tell you what we've got to take this all the coaching staff and Dave got down on it and went, I'll tell you what, we've got to take this. Because that hotel room on the Tour de France,

who was in there last night? Who was in there last night? So when they started getting really nervous about picking up little viruses and stuff like that, so we started off sending a truck with 24 personalized sleep kits in bags and taking them into the hotel unzipping them on the floor ignoring the bed altogether and in there is the linen the pillow the duvet the little layers that conform to their body shape it smells like home it smells like them so from a familiarity

and everything else the riders just went love it wow right now all the other cycling teams were just looking across going what on earth are they doing but the riders again as you pointed out you know we love to measure in sport of course but there's no need to measure this because during the course of every day, 200 kilometers, the riders knew that when they got back, they would massage, team meeting, and everything else. And they'd be hanging around and not really wanting to rush up to that room upstairs because who was in there last night is not...

And we all know that the first night in any new environment, we lose 40% opportunity to recovery. So don't ignore that which we can come on to when you talk about adrenaline and cortisol because we teach people not to sleep when things are in the wrong place so it's something like that but so what happened was suddenly they could all see that the riders come in they do their massage team meeting fuel up and they've all gone upstairs and they're all climbing into their little sleep kit so they all want to go to bed yeah because recovery is massive to a

cyclist yeah yeah massive to a cyclist and um no i i a few years back i was getting a sports massage for someone who used to be on the tour yeah and um you know the masseur said to me that actually, there's often not fights, but people want to come off, they want to be the first one in to massage. They want to get that recovery started early. It's intense stuff. And it was incredible to hear that. But just a couple of things that,

it's incredible that you said that there's the same smell and the same feel because you've got the same products. And we know that the brain is a very uh associative organ so you know it likes pattern it likes routine and then just that itself knowing that these are familiar products there's a familiar smell yeah that can help and that's something people listen to this you can um really take from this i hope is you know where the advice comes from is to keep your bedroom you know just for sleep or intimacy is really to try and just associate beds and your bedroom with with sleep and rest rather than with netflix and work emails and things because your brain does start making those associations and i just want to say

to sort of you know just just focus in on that points but you said something incredibly interesting there which was that we know and please correct me if i get this wrong but the first night in a new sleep environment you lose 40 of recovery yeah i mean i've i've i've not run away and clinically tested that, trialed that or anything else, but I came across that. And I don't think, again, this is why you point out everything so practical and logical and common sense. I don't really need to find that out.

I know. I know that when I'm going into a different environment, I don't know, it smells differently, it's in a city or in the countryside, it's in a different country in the countryside it's in a different country it's a different product who was in that bath yesterday what's in the carpet what's under the bed you know are we next to the lift is there lots of people in the hotel making a lot of noise so you just i i read some science on this recently you know again i can't i think it's probably a lot more than 40 50 yeah but it's just that it's almost an alarm to the bodies and

it's your your body's on a bit of vigilance and high but it's just that it's almost an alarm to the bodies and it's your your body's on a bit of vigilance and high alert on an evolutionary level it's okay i don't know is it safe here and you know on a personal level i you know i spend a lot of time now uh well more time than i used to in london you know i live in the northwest of england and that's where my patients are and that's where i see people fantastic um but i often end up in london quite a lot these days and i've noticed as well when if i have to stay over and i'm staying in a hotel i like to stay in the same hotel i've got i've got one or two that i like staying in because it now breeds that familiarity and actually you're making you're making gains to the to

maximizing your recovery knowing that it's going to be reduced anyway exactly and i remember recently i had to come down to do something uh in the media and it was a new company and they've got their own hotels what they book and i was trying to get the hotel i wanted and they wouldn't so no this is where we use and i didn't really sleep that well now you could argue it wasn't in my head before i went in absolutely possibly but i've sat there a few times now since almost it's really good there now and it i can absolutely resonate with that with that stats on some level that first night in a new place you don't sleep well yeah it started like that and and suddenly it was like that the riders were just you know this is great keep it up and so we went to more levels and so not only did we go into the hotel room with their personalized kit

just on zip it on the floor we also went around every surface the staff did and clean every surface right just just uh and i try and reduce the risk of infection because the maids have cleaned it forever rolling process of humans coming in and out of this room, whatever size they are, whatever's going on in their world, or what viruses they're carrying or whatever. So the maids do their job. But now we're putting an elite rider in there, and we're two and a half weeks into a tour. So we would just give them the confidence that we have gone around and just wiped all the surfaces with our protocol of cleaning. We had a powerful, you know, the handheld Dyson.

And we would be able to pull the bed out and just get around to get as much. And we used to find things under the beds, which I will not describe, right? And then we even went and we put a little high particle filter in the corner of the room for an hour and that would literally as you say you spend a lot of time in london i think every single day you're talking about the air quality in london and stuff like that is that that little high particle filter and then you take the little filter out and it's dripping you just realize that in the air there's lots of things that would stop you nose breathing naturally which is nice instead of mouth breathing and we would also have some black bin

liners and some black tape and we would be able to control light and dark by using disposable things and put a little bit of black tape over the tv that's right in front of the bed saying watch me because we know the rider's not going to get up and switch it off. They use the remote. But the little laser is just great. So suddenly, Team Sky Riders, yes, it was a hotel. It was part of the tour.

There's another one tomorrow. But while they're riding along, they know that when they get there, the smells the filament is just like you're saying we can't do much about the whole place but what we can do is reduce their maximize their recovery by reducing those things down as much and even and even psychologically just then knowing that that was being taken care of must have had a huge impact and you know you so we mentioned marginal

gains right and for those of you who are not familiar with it's a concept that you know particularly these top elite sporting levels you know all these little one percent gains add up you know five one percent gains is five percent and you're looking for every potential uh you know way to get to get ahead of your opponents and the opposing teams. I would argue that sleep is not a marginal gain. It is way more than a marginal gain because, you know, the impact of sleep, you just saw from, you told me from Manchester United, just from having that bit of nap time

or recovery time in the middle of the day, performance sprinting time is quicker in the afternoon. It's just incredible. Absolutely. This is a huge gain. I think that's where, you know, you asked a question a long time ago about does it relate to everybody else.

All I'm doing is dealing with human beings. They have ever-increasing demands and schedules and they just happen to be in sport. But they have families, they have partners, they have friends, they have children. They have friends. They have children. So it really is, you know, that individual is looking at their own recovery approach of what they're doing. Totally. So whether it's a nurse, a pilot, you know, and when you said before, since the book came out and wandering around the world in 13 different languages now i get doctors i

consult with doctors i coach nurses pilots teachers at schools students of 15 16 year olds absolutely everybody lorry drivers taxi drivers well everyone knows that they're not getting enough sleep and everyone wants more graduate Graduate surgeons in the University of Tennessee, because they realize that doing 80 to 120 hours as a junior doctor may be all right in the 90s, we pointed out before, when we had lots of recovery breaks around us, but we didn't know what they were there to do. Give us recovery, now we fill it with tech.

This is a good opportunity to finish off our conversation which frankly i could go on for another two three hours with you um i'm really fascinated by that connection between sleep and sport and elite performance but you know for those of you who really resonated with what nick's saying the book he's got is called sleep uh the myth of eight hours the power of naps and the new plan to recharge your body and mind. I've now started doing show notes. So on my website, you will see all the links that we've spoken about, and there'll be a link to Nick's book if you want to take a look and see what he has to say there. Nick, how I try and end off is I try and give people who are listening to this podcast some simple actionable things that

they can put into practice into their own life or at least reflect on immediately after this conversation so i guess the question for me would be to you in these 20 plus years of learning from some of the best athletes in the world and helping them improve their sleep what can joe public learn from what you have learned and you know what are those tips that you can give to the listeners at home you know maybe use your seven steps if you need to or however you want to do it what are some things that people can think about at home to improve the quality of their sleep i think just picking up on the on the last thing about marginal gains being quite minor. In this area, making just one little change, one little marginal change in any of those seven areas will aggregate up into a significant improvement. People call it, you've revolutionized my life.

So you don't have to make major steps. Little ones don't add up to one overall marginal gain like chris hoy gold medal win and buy a wheel oh yeah it's actually this could completely change it and all you need to do is just simply follow what's in the book simple steps and it's simply tonight today just put in your browser circadian rhythms and you'll see some images of a 24-hour period of when testosterone blood pressure light and dark everything else which is happening every day and we all talk about harmony with patterns and rhythms if you just get a little bit of a better understanding of the human relationship with light and dark you'll start to figure it out. The next one is everybody's probably aware of owls and larks or they feel great in the morning and some people feel great at night.

You might be a morning type. So you want to wake up early and you're starving when you wake up and you love the mornings. You might be somebody who likes to do all their paperwork at two o'clock in the morning. It's your chronotype. It's a little genetic twist it's a bit like am there's two hours in front of others and when you look at the circadian rhythms and you look at that and you associate with it then there's things you can do right tomorrow relative to your chronotype which can have an effect on your over recovery the big one really is number three which is the myth of eight hours is to change your mindset to sleeping in cycles rather than hours and realize that we've always slept in a polyphasic way rather than monophasic.

So it's perfectly natural for you to do shorter periods more often and wake up in the middle of the night and feel happy. So the first thing you do is just identify your most consistent wake time. So mine is 6.30. It means that I will wake any time between quarter to six, six o'clock, 20 past six. I'm always switching my alarm off unless I do something crazy. And I like 6.30.

It means I can pretty much do everything I've ever been asked to do. I don't become a sleep coach until eight o'clock. The next 90 minutes, my post-sleep routine, which is really important in today's world. And all I do is chop the 24 hours up into 90 minutes. So I get 6.30, I've got 8 a.m. that way, but I also go back. So I've got five. You get these timings back in 90 minute cycles. And if I go to sleep at 11 o'clock that's five 90 minute cycles into 6 30 that's 7.5 hours but i can also sleep between 12 30 and 6 30 2 a.m and 6 30 do you always have the same wake-up time yes and that's something really interesting you

put in your book can you just expand on that a little bit for people listening the best thing about the day is the going to sleep for humans is very random because we have so many things that we like to do in the evenings now because we've got electric light and technology so but the one thing is is starting the day so what i've always liked about this is that the sun comes around the planet and if we're sleeping outside we would get these two hormone shifts serotonin and melatonin so literally we get woken up by the start of the day we become active bowel and bladder fuel and hydrate and all of those things in that first part of the day and i think that consistent point with the brain with the circadian rhythms we have absolutely no control over is a good start to your process the first 90 minutes is critical which we could talk about for ages

but all i'm thinking is right good start to the day i've woken up i need to give myself plenty of time so it's an unrushed approach because i'm in a very demanding world now I think every 90 minutes I don't have a buzzer on my wrist but I just think tiny little breaks distractions every 90 minutes can add up to my recovery I think of you know the between one and three everybody says to me they can't nap and they haven't got time to it do you know how much time we waste every day. So once you make it important that a little 20-minute cycle at lunchtime can actually improve and stop me wasting valuable time with this process,

then you start doing it. The early evening one is fantastic because any AMers, is if you put a little 20 minutes in between 5 and 7, you can enjoy the summer because you're about to shift the clocks. So one minute you're going home in the dark and you don't want to do anything. The next minute you don't want to be falling asleep at nine o'clock

because everybody's out there having fun. So suddenly you start to have this relationship with polyphasic sleeping and you get this lovely thing where somebody will go, well, instead of I get home from work, I've traveled, I've done this, I've got to do that and I've got to do that. I've got to cook some food. I've got to get to the gym. I've got to do this.

I've got to pack my bag. Oh my God, there's only so many hours left before I've got to get up again. And it's panic. So we just go, well, do that in a nice relaxed way. Wake up, do a couple of cycles. Have a 20 minute nap. Have a couple of cycles at night.

Put the alarm on, wake up, you know, 2 o'clock, which is 11 till 2. Really? Yeah. And then iron the shirt, make a nice lunch, listen to music, make a few notes, and then go back and do 330 into 6. 30. What? I can do that?

Yeah, because if you take the pressure off your day and create these little polyphasic moments. Well, I think that's the best thing about your book for me is you do take the pressure off your day and create these little polyphasic moments. Well, I think that's the best thing about you. But for me, you do take the pressure off people. And it's a very pragmatic approach to people in the modern world in terms of saying there's perfection and then there's actually reality. And how can you bridge that gap? And I think a lot of people also, and this reminds me of a patient I saw literally this Monday in my surgery. Yeah. And this is, I was trying to encourage him to go.

He's in a busy, busy period. He's got a lot of work on. He said, I don't have time to go out for walks. I don't have time to go outside. I just need to work. You know, I know how much work I've got to do. And I said, you know what? What you're not realizing is actually going out for a 20-minute walk in the natural light in the morning,

actually, and having that little break, it's going to make you way more productive when you come back. And I'm sure it's a little bit like that napping thing, is that, I don't have time, I've got too much work to do, but actually don't realise that you have that, and you'll be way more productive afterwards. I think there's this lovely, you know,

it's about sleeping environments, and you think, I've got to go and buy a great big fat mattress with loads of things in it, a special pillow to help me sleep. I've got to have a pre-sleep routine that's going to change. It's all really just intrusive, non-real. They don't have an effect. You've got the wrong approach. And this just completely redefines what you're doing.

So a lot of things you don't need to do. You can sleep on a bit of foam. As humans, we can sleep anywhere on any time and anything. So you get this obsession about the bedroom and the products and all of those sort of things. And a lot of my clients, they're sleeping in the middle of a track. They sleep in different hotels everywhere. They're hanging off the side of a mountain in a hook, race across America on a mountain bike. my clients are just hopping off the bike and jumping onto a kit yeah they don't have that big mattress there do they you suddenly go oh i'm not

sleeping well i feel tired and everything else i'll go and buy a new mattress and get a perfect night's sleep now so i think what it does is strip away a lot of things yeah nick i if we weren't pressured on time i would literally keep going with you for another hour and maybe maybe and get you back on and we can do this in a few months well we can keep talking right can't we i mean we can leave the listeners and we can crack on talking yeah exactly but i i think i think people listening to this probably would have really found your very well a very unique perspective on sleep very you know super interesting and fascinating and it's come from elite sport but i hope they understand all it was was just finding

a way and that way literally you know if you're about to have children then moving from a monophasic approach into a polyphasic approach with the kids if you're already in a polyphasic approach having children is a breeze yeah and i think it relates to everybody and that's i think the thing you do so well nick is that you make it relatable to everyone and you take the pressure off which i think is much needed in the world of sleep health so we all know don't we you know if you try and tell somebody to stop worrying about something or chill out, they're going to take no notice. You have to find a way and take them along the little path,

and then they stop worrying about it, and they didn't know that they've done it. And I think that's what the book does to you. Yeah. Well, Nick, look, I really appreciate your time today, and I hope to have you back on the podcast very soon. Fantastic. That concludes the latest conversation on my Feel Better Live More podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do take a screenshot of this page on your phone right now and post it on social media. Please do tag me on Instagram, Instagram stories, Facebook and Twitter. And please do use the

hashtag feel better live more. I want this podcast to help transform the health of as many people as possible so if you could also leave a five-star review on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts that also helps me spread this message further I'm always open to more suggestions so again please let me know on social media if you've got any more suggestions on people you would like to see me interview on this podcast thanks for listening and I hope you can join me next time