“Vigilance around sleep is counterproductive to sleep,” she said.

Here’s how sleep experts who work with Olympians help them rest better. You don’t need to be an elite athlete to benefit from their advice.

If you’re sleeping somewhere new, make the place your own

The Olympic Village can be a particularly difficult sleep environment, with tight quarters and notoriously uncomfortable beds. Johnson, who competed at the Games in 2018, recalls the “paper-thin” walls in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

“I could totally hear people above me, under me, next to me,” Johnson said. She fell asleep by listening to white noise on noise-cancelling headphones. Now she rarely travels without them.

Julia Kern, a Team USA cross-country skier, regularly travels with her own pillow and a mini humidifier to provide a measure of constancy during winter race season, where she will typically stay in a different hotel every week.

Managing your sleep environment – ideally to make your space dark, quiet and cool – is an essential component of good sleep hygiene, Clark said. The goal is to control what you can and accept that some sleep disruptions are inevitable.

Develop a calming evening routine

Kern is also prone to late-night rumination – and the stakes of Olympic competition don’t help. “Sometimes, after a race, I’ll replay the race in my head and get in this cycle,” she said. To refocus her mind, she imagines she is in bed at home, pictures a blank space or practices box breathing.

Rhythmic breathing exercises are one way to help you relax and send a signal to your sympathetic nervous system that it’s time to wind down, the experts said.

“We want to create a protected time for the body to be prepared for sleep,” Clark said. You could take a warm shower, listen to calming music or journal, she said. Clark recommends avoiding activities that may get you worked up before bed – like watching dramatic TV shows or scrolling on your phone.

Wake up at a consistent time

Sleep consistency, or sticking to a relatively regular bedtime and wake-up time, has been linked to better health. But going to bed at a particular hour can be challenging at the Games, especially for athletes competing in evening events.

Jim Doorley, another psychologist for the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee, tells athletes to focus instead on keeping their wake-up time stable.

Waking up at roughly the same time every morning helps establish your circadian rhythm, especially if you get a dose of natural light. If natural light is not an option, Clark said, exercise and eating are the next best ways to reset your internal clock.

Don’t obsess over your sleep score

While sleep tracking can have some benefits, Doorley said, it can also lead to “pressure and perfectionism”. He has seen athletes compare sleep scores from their devices (a rating that’s typically based on sleep quality and duration) and even compete with one another. “Sometimes, with more knowledge comes almost the curse of knowledge,” he said.

Johnson experimented with sleep trackers for a while but said the experience of “waking up and being told I slept poorly when, actually, I felt fine” wasn’t worth the stress.

Kern tracks her sleep with a device and generally finds it useful, but she makes a point not to check her sleep scores on race weekends so she doesn’t fixate on them.

Remember your body is resilient

The US Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s sleep guidelines note that while it’s important for athletes to get consistent sleep, “one night of poor sleep is rarely enough to derail your performance when you have adrenaline on your side and good sleep banked from prior nights”.

Doorley advises athletes to try to tap into a “childlike relationship to sleep”, or sleeping when you’re tired and trying not to overthink it. “Letting go is essential,” he said.

Johnson agreed: “That is something I’ve had to learn over my years. I’ve gotten some of my best results on, like, four hours of sleep, probably.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Martin Fritz Huber

Main photograph by: Gabriela Bhaskar

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