Sleep Check-list for the BJJ practitioner
5 minute read
If you’re going to strength train AND train BJJ, you absolutely need enough good quality sleep if you want to perform well, feel strong and reduce your chances of injury.
We would argue that sleep is the most important thing when it comes to being able to continue to recover and train hard. There are tons of studies supporting the connection between lack of sleep and poor athletic performance, higher risk of injury and reduced strength output. Lack of sleep also affects tissue quality and makes it harder to build muscle.
How much sleep should you get?
This will depend on the person. The average, non-active individual could probably get away with 6-8 hours a night, whereas the very active and highly-athletic person may need upwards to 10 hours of sleep each night.
For the best sleep, follow this checklist:
Have a 1-2 hour wind-down routine to calm yourself down and get into a relaxed state before you go to sleep
Make sure your room is as dark, quiet and as cool as possible (black out blinds, ear plugs, temperature control, cool sheets, etc)
Go to bed and wake up at the SAME TIME every day – this one’s a biggie for your circadian rhythm
Expose yourself to sunlight upon waking and throughout the day. Light exposure is an important cue for your body’s sleep cycle and it’s been shown that light exposure can help sleep duration and quality. (If you think about it, it is at the root of being human – we should wake and sleep with the rhythm of the sun. We function optimally during daylight hours and relax and sleep in darkness)
Turn your screens off and avoid negative news before bed! Put your fucking phone away and stop reading news about war and politcis before bed (and/or in the middle of the night if you wake up). Our brains are wired to want to read negative things, we are attracted to negative headlines, so STOP! It’s making you feel like shit, so put that away if you want to sleep well
If you have racing thoughts before sleep, make sure you follow step 5, but also try journaling out your thoughts, doing a gratitude journal, or listening to a guided meditation before bed (lots of free ones on Spotify or Youtube). This is also a good time to practice calming breathing exercises. If these things are not helping, it may be worth seeing a professional therapist to help you get to the root cause of the anxious thoughts keeping you up at night.
Try supplementing with magnesium – magnesium glycinate, magnesium l-threonate or magnesium taurate are great chelates of magnesium that may help make you feel more calm and relaxed (we like and trust the brands ATP Labs or Designs for Health)
Make sleep a priority in your life! Friends asking you to go out for drinks on a Thursday night when you know you need to wake up early the next day? It may be wise to say no if you want to kick butt the next day and feel your best. Just know there’s a trade off… maybe you think it’s lame or socially unhealthy to say no? (you don’t have to do this ALL the time, but just reflect and be critical of your daily choices if you’re feeling like shit all the time and want to make a change). At the end of the day, you’re choosing your priorities with your actions and how you feel and perform will reflect that.
You need to believe you can sleep well. This one might be a bit “woo-woo” for some of you, but I’m a big believer in that your mind greatly affects your physical ability to do something. As the Henry Ford quote goes, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t you are right”. If you’re someone who says “I’m a bad sleeper” or “I never sleep well, that’s just how I am” …then yes! You will always be that way! This is your own self-limiting belief and it’s affecting your ability to sleep. Try challenging and changing this narrative and identity and see what happens (PS: this personal paradigm shift will take work, it’s not going to happen in one day)
Special considerations!
If you’re a new parent, sleep deprivation is going to be part of your life, there’s no way around that unless you have 24/7 care for your kids. If you are a shift worker, you may also run into issues with sleep schedule, deprivation and circadian rhythm. If this is the case for you, there are a few things to do to reduce the negative impact this can have on your training:
Reduce/modify your training efforts. The reality is that you shouldn’t train as hard as you did prior to having kids and being sleep deprived. If you want to reduce the likelihood of injury, and be able to train long-term, you need to adjust your training output to match your input (i.e. sleep). You can only train as hard as you recover. If you’re not recovering well (due to lack of sleep) you absolutely need to adjust your training, or it’s an injury waiting to happen.
Get it where you can! Have naps during the day if your schedule allows, and when you DO sleep, make the most of it! Make sure your sleep quality is as good as it can be even if it’s just 4 hours.
If possible, go to sleep and wake up at the SAME TIME everyday (if you’re a shift worker and your schedule changes often, or your kids are giving you a hard time with bedtime/wake up, this might not be possible 100% of the time, so just do your best with your current situation)
Training BJJ right before bed: yikes!
Ever notice how it’s harder to fall asleep if you train BJJ at 8-9pm (and your bedtime is 10pm)? You go home, eat dinner, shower and then need to get to bed ASAP but you can’t fall asleep… your nervous system is fired up from all the training and physical activity you just did, you just “fought” a bunch of people – that’s not the state you want to be in when you’re trying to chill out and calm down before bed. Here are some tips to deal with this:
Avoid training late when you can (aim for mid-day or morning if your schedule allows)
Take magnesium ASAP (right after class, or immediately when you get home). Magnesium glycinate, magnesium L-threonate and magnesium taurate are all good chelates to try – see which one makes you feel best
Take an Epsom salt bath. This is another great way to get calming magnesium into your system (transdermally). Similar to what you would find in a float-spa/tank
Be organized when you get home from class. Develop a system to cut down on extra time spent dickin’ around at home, meaning have your dinner ready (or make a super quick dinner or have a protein shake), shower and throw your laundry in asap so you have more chill time to relax before sleep.
Give yourself a little bit of chill-time before getting to bed – this may help you sleep better once you actually get INTO bed
Share this with your sleep deprived training partners!
Sleep deprivation and how it affects athletic performance: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9960533/
Sleep and IGF-1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079219301911
The effects of sunlight on sleep: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/exposure-to-natural-light-during-the-day-may-help-you-sleep-better#How-sleep-patterns-shift-with-the-seasons
