I've had a hard time sleeping. So I asked an expert who works with elite athletes for advice

Yahoo

19-06-2025

The Athletic
The other night, as I tried to fall asleep around midnight, I started to panic.
I hadn't slept the previous night. Or the night before that. Or much at all in the last week. I was exhausted, I couldn't concentrate, and I felt like a zombie.
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And yet I didn't feel close to dozing off. My mind wandered; my brain hopped from topic to topic. Before I knew it, another hour had passed. , I thought, and that made me nervous. The last thing I needed was another sleepless night.
Many of our conversations here at Peak revolve around how athletes and coaches can improve their performance. By now, sleep is widely recognized as a crucial component of the equation. However, that doesn't mean it's easy.
Former NBA player Andre Iguodala resorted to long naps since adrenaline from games made it hard to sleep. Golfers Jason Day and Bubba Watson have both discussed their struggles with sleep. And gold-medalist gymnast Aly Raisman attributed overthinking and anxiety to her sleep problems.
My recent struggles have made me think: What do professional athletes do when they have trouble sleeping? Maybe the answers would help me (and you).
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I called Dr. Chris Winter, a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist for several professional sports teams, including the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team one win away from winning an NBA championship. When I told Winter that I, too, was struggling to sleep, he happily chirped, 'OK!' He didn't seem too concerned. However, I realized where that was coming from once he started talking.
'The more that organizations care and pay attention to sleep, it's kind of accidentally putting players under even more pressure,' he said. 'It's an interesting space to navigate. It's not managing sleep as much as it is managing your expectation of sleep.'
What was happening to me, Winter said, is what happens to a lot of players he works with.
Winter reminded me that when we understand something is important, we care when it begins to plummet and naturally grow a little worried. More experts are emphasizing the importance of sleep to high-performance athletes, which Winter views as a double-edged sword.
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He grimaces when he sees specific self-help sleep articles. You know the ones:
Winter doesn't deny that some of the advice is truthful — falling asleep in a colder, darker room, for example, or engaging in a relaxing activity like reading before bed. However, his bigger concern is that people overthink sleep and struggle with it.
A while back, he was working with a San Francisco Giants player. This player walked into spring training one day and said, 'My twin babies were up vomiting all night, and I didn't get any sleep. I can't play like this.'
Instead, the player hit two home runs in a game for the first time in his career.
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Winter believes the problem isn't so much a lack of sleep. It's our expectation of what we think will happen if we don't get enough sleep that has the biggest impact.
He gave me an analogy: 'Nobody ever skips one meal and calls the doctor to say, 'I have a problem. I went out to lunch with some people and I am not feeling hungry for some reason. I got a Diet Coke but didn't eat my sandwich. What should I do? What pills should I take?' '
I wanted to know from Winter if there was anything tangible that we could do to try and combat the spiral effect that comes with not falling asleep quickly. Simply not worrying about sleep is easier said than done.
With several of the teams he has worked with, Winter has introduced a device called 'Muse.' It's a brain-sensing headband that monitors brain activity and spews out real-time feedback during meditation and sleep. One WNBA player tried the device, and her results revealed that she was significantly more relaxed when trying to fall asleep than anyone else on her team.
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He asked her what she was thinking about before she fell into that peaceful state. She told him she imagined herself in an empty, dark gym. Someone would throw her a ball, she would shoot a free throw, watch it go in, over and over.
Winter was intrigued. 'What made you think to do that?' he asked.
'I've done this all my life,' the player said. 'It felt comfortable.'
Most of us might never use a brain-sensing headband, but Winter believes putting ourselves in a comfortable situation can help. Perhaps it's visualizing something nostalgic, such as walking through your favorite park or mentally engaging in a familiar activity you enjoy.
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'If you can get in bed and be awake but you're in that sort of deep, meditative state, you're recovering your brain about as well as you would if you were sleeping,' Winter said. 'People think it's about falling asleep fast. That's a terrible metric. We don't say, 'Here's how to eat your dinner faster.' Resting is very restorative. If before bed you like to meditate, brainstorm ideas for new things, think about a screenplay, go on imaginary dates with your celebrity crush, I think that's awesome.'
Since the Oklahoma City Thunder are in the NBA Finals, I asked Winter what tips he has shared with Thunder players. He said he wants players to accept that they can't just shut their minds off, so instead he wants them to remember that it won't make or break everything if they don't get the perfect amount of sleep. That thought process, he said, can relieve the pressure of having to fall asleep immediately.
Winter also encourages people to spend less time in bed outside of sleeping and to avoid using blue light screens before bedtime.
And for those who still struggle, he'll suggest creating a schedule. Document the time you tried to fall asleep, the time you fell asleep, if you woke up at any point during the night and any naps you took.
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You can collect a few weeks' worth of data before adding up all those hours of sleep and dividing them by the number of days. That will give you your sleep average. Noticing patterns and making adjustments from there can really help, he said, but there's one part that should never change: The time you wake up each morning.
In a way, a fixed wake-up time trains your brain. You can fall asleep early or stay up as late as you want, but by waking up at the designated time each day, your personal sleep drive becomes stronger. Sleeping in here and there, Winter said, will shorten your sleep drive.
'When you have a schedule, your brain starts to understand the opportunity of sleep,' he said. 'So your brain gets really, really excited and driven to make use of the time that you are given. You just want to kind of create a little bit of that in your own life.'
I admit, some of this seems a little self-explanatory, but Winter explained that simple reminders go a long way for the athletes he works with, too.
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Since I've spoken with Winter, I've slept a little better. It's not a dramatic difference, but I do feel more comfortable than before.
One night, I visualized a nostalgic scene and mentally engaged in an activity there. I pictured my sisters and I picking berries from my great-grandmother's berry bushes in eastern Pennsylvania when we were little, then eating lunch at her kitchen table afterward. To my surprise, I fell asleep after that.
More than anything, though, hearing Winter explain why there isn't that much to worry about has lessened my spiraling at night. As he reminded me, there's no need to overthink it.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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