Sleep Better Without Overhauling Your Routine
Sleep is one of the most powerful recovery tools we have.
Yet when people struggle with sleep, they often assume the solution requires a complicated routine or expensive tools.
In reality, a few small adjustments can dramatically improve sleep quality.
Here are several quick tweaks that often make a meaningful difference.
For most clients I work with, sleep is always one of those topics they either actively want to improve or their experiences indicate that working on sleep quality would yield significant benefits. Like I've mentioned the past couple of posts, most often this doesn't require a complete change of habits but instead a couple of small tweaks will yield big results. I typically suggest picking one thing at a time, work on that for a couple of weeks such that you can evaluate the impact that change is making. From there you can either pick another aspect to work on or look to further improve that area.
Getting sunlight (even just 5-10 minutes) early in the day helps set your circadian rhythm such that not only will you find it easier to get moving mentally and physically in the morning, but your natural rhythm will help queue your body to sleep. Something as simple as your morning coffee, tea, or a glass of water on your porch/patio will accomplish this.
Protecting your sleep time as much as you block out your morning routine is another one that many overlook. Most people can easily walk through their mornings, but struggle to point to their plan for arguably the most important part of your day - sleep. Start by dedicated 5-10 minutes to simply wind down before going to bed by putting away electronics, and getting ready for bed. As you get better at this you can include things like journaling, meditation, stretching, etc to further help your mind and body prepare for a more restorative rest.
Cutting back on stimulants is another one that can help, and this would include caffeine but also for many sugars can cause challenges to sleep. Of all the suggestions, this is probably the most variable from person to person as some are not impacted at all by this (I fall into this bucket) others notice small amounts of caffeine even at lunch will cause challenges. So if you recognize these impact your sleep, work to move them earlier into the day.
Making your room a little cooler or darker is another shift that can be accomplished relatively simply. Changing the thermostat or fans can help with temperature as well as all sorts of other bedding options. As for darkness, curtains and other options exist but I find one of the simplest options is an eye mask.
The final one I'll mention is trying to maintain consistency with sleep time, as most people (except for the weekends) normally keep a consistent wake time. The more consistent you can keep both of these times (including the weekends) the better your sleep quality will become. Again, don't make radical shifts but try moving in 15 minute increments and this would also apply to trying to get more sleep as most can adjust the sleep time easier then their wake time.
There are lots of options out there to improve your sleep but these are some of the simplest, cheapest, and universally available ones you can try out that are proven to make a difference. Notice I didn't say these changes are easy as that's a term I try to avoid since "easy" is incredibly dependant on the person, pick whichever one you think will be easiest for you to implement and see how you feel after 2 weeks of consistency.
If improving sleep is part of your performance or health goals, start simple.
Recovery improves faster than most people expect when sleep improves first.
