Sport

Colm Cavanagh: Sleep is essential for being at the top of your game

'A lack of sleep has an effect on everything we do. Energy levels, concentration levels, the list goes on'
'A lack of sleep has an effect on everything we do. Energy levels, concentration levels, the list goes on' 'A lack of sleep has an effect on everything we do. Energy levels, concentration levels, the list goes on'

Sleep – after spending the long Easter weekend living it up in Las Vegas how ironic that my thoughts have turned to sleep, its importance, and the effects of not getting enough.

There are many factors which impact our sleep and every coach/doctor/PT/lifestyle guru will recommend that we aim for eight hours sleep per night.

Now, I have two kids who are luckily considered good sleepers (well at least I never hear them during the night anyway) but I honestly couldn’t pinpoint the last time I got eight hours unbroken sleep.

Society currently makes us think that if we aren’t busy then we aren’t doing enough. We feel obliged to cram our calendars with work and social catch-ups and don’t factor in any down time or weekends where we have zero plans and no intentions of making any either.

I think after two years of restrictions on meetings, whether it be for work or socially we are now making up for lost time and as a result are spreading ourselves very thin.

It doesn’t matter whether our jobs or studies are physically demanding or mentally demanding the need for good, consistent sleep remains the same.

If we are to believe all we read, then we need to be setting our alarms for 5am to be up and make the most of the golden hour or two before the rest of the household begin to stir.

If this is how we are truly supposed to ‘get ahead’ of everyone else then I’m happy to get left behind and enjoy an extra hour in bed to be honest.

Sleep is something I have struggled with for years. I am a very routine person, probably because my time has always been scheduled from I was young - school, training, study, training, work, training, gym.

Every evening I put my phone in a separate room from 9pm onwards so that I’m not aimlessly scrolling and filling my head with needless and pointless things.

I shower, have a bowl of cereal and watch some TV before bed. Any team-mate who has ever shared a hotel room with me will know that it doesn’t matter where I am or how many meals I’ve had that evening, I can’t do without cereal before bed.

It doesn’t guarantee me that I will have a good night sleep, far from it, but without it I don’t think I would settle at all.

Over the years I have found staying in hotels started to become more and more of a struggle for me.

I generally don’t sleep well the night before a game, I don’t know many people who do, but from travelling throughout Ireland for football, I now associate hotels with a poor night sleep. Too warm, too small, too noisy, too uncomfortable, too anything and I have decided before I’ve even unpacked that I’m not going to sleep.

I don’t know if it started as pre-match nerves and I’ve now associated it with hotel stays but that’s probably unfair as I would be exactly the same at home the night before a game.

A lack of sleep has an effect on everything we do. Energy levels, concentration levels, the list goes on. We push ourselves daily to try to be the best employee, student, team-mate, partner, parent, whatever it is that consumes our time throughout the day.

Each day we try to squeeze in that one extra thing on top of the previous days tasks, just to feel like we are getting ahead.

We start to think that five to seven hours of broken sleep is plenty, we are still functioning so it must be enough. It isn’t.

For some of us it will take months of pushing ourselves before we realise that we aren’t actually doing any of the tasks on our never-ending lists well because our concentration is gone or we are taking shortcuts because we simply don’t have the energy anymore.

Our bodies need rest and need sleep to be able to function correctly and we need to start prioritising this.

I feel like a complete hypocrite even writing that, I am the person who will always try to squeeze in that extra meeting or take the phone call no matter what day or time it is, but I am learning slowly but surely that it really is all about balance.

I can’t be a good team-mate or husband or father if I am exhausted and my concentration is gone so I have started to prioritise my sleep and I now have a proper unwinding routine in the evenings.

As little as 10 minutes of simply doing absolutely nothing is enough for me to switch my brain off from the days activities (and the next day’s schedule) and allow me the headspace to relax and get a good night sleep.

I try to do this every evening if possible and as much as I would have scoffed at the idea even six months ago, it really does help.

After four nights in Vegas, I would say that some of the group have managed a total of eight hours sleep for the entire weekend but now that we have arrived back to reality (and promised ourselves, albeit incorrectly, that this is the last time we will be there) I can safely say that all of us will require a few more days of readjustment and extra sleep – to get over the jetlag of course.

Enough about that though, it’s getting near cereal time…