'Optimal Sleep Is a Competitive Advantage'

For nearly 10 years, Andre Iguodala’s routine had been the same.

The NBA star would play video games until 4 a.m., sleep for a few hours, head to practice, and come home to take a two-hour nap.

But now, Iguodala was 28 and realizing the patterns of the past decade may not be suitable for the next. So, he met with renowned sleep physician Dr. Cheri Mah about strategies he could implement to get better rest.

The two worked collaboratively to develop an evening routine, a wind-down regimen before bed and to cut Iguodala's daytime naps. The following season, he increased his points per minute by 29 percent and significantly upped his free throw percentage — winning MVP of the NBA Finals with the Golden State Warriors.

“It was eye-opening for him to see the difference of what having a sufficient and healthier foundation of sleep every night really meant for performance outcome,” Mah said.

Mah has worked with the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco Giants and Philadelphia Eagles, among other teams, as well as with several athletes across a range of sports to cultivate sleep routines and enhance performance.

The Daily Coach spoke to her about misconceptions around sleep, the importance of a wind-down routine before bed, and steps leaders can take to get better rest.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dr. Mah, thank you for doing this. Tell us about your childhood and some lessons from it.

I grew up in Cupertino, Calif., about an hour south of San Francisco. My mom was a kindergarten teacher for half of her career, then she became an administrator and director of admissions at a private school. My father is a senior research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, now in his 51st year. He did a fair amount of work with space motion sickness, smart medical technology, artificial gravity and spacecraft docking.

My parents really encouraged me to try everything, to try an activity to see if I liked it or didn’t. It was O.K. if I didn’t like it, but at least I gave some time, effort and practice and could see if it was something I enjoyed or could grow into. I learned to be adaptive to my environment, to figure out what worked and what didn’t work.

When did you begin studying sleep and what appealed to you about it?

I was an undergrad at Stanford University, and I met Dr. William Dement. He’s considered the pioneer of the modern field of sleep medicine. He discovered rapid eye movement, the stages of sleep, and founded the first sleep clinic at Stanford.

I thought sleep was just so fascinating. We all do this process every single night, and we’re only starting to understand why we sleep and what happens when we don’t get sufficient or quality sleep. I really thought the intersection with sports was fascinating.

We had access to phenomenal Division I athletes, and we started doing research on the effects of paying back accumulated sleep debt. There were cognitive benefits like faster reaction time, or with men’s basketball a 9 percent improvement on free throws and three-point shots, and faster sprint time. The path wasn’t necessarily intentional from the beginning, but it’s led me to a very interesting career.

What are the biggest misconceptions or mistakes you commonly see around sleep?

A lot of people are just fixated on total duration. That’s important, but there’s more to it than just getting the minimum of seven hours every night. The quality of your sleep has many factors: Your sleep environment, the choices you make during the daytime, whether you get sunlight in the morning, caffeine, alcohol consumption. Are you taking naps and, if so, for how long?

Another misconception is there’s still this badge of honor around needing only four or five hours of sleep to perform at your best, but that’s definitely not true based on an abundance of literature. We need minimally seven hours for the average adult to prevent health risks and performance decrements. I think the tide is turning, and we have more athletes like Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes who advocate that you really need a foundational amount and a quality sleep to be at your best.

For many of the top athletes, optimal sleep is a competitive advantage and the most powerful recovery tool.

What does a good wind-down routine look like?

It’s so critical and one of the first things I recommend anyone start if you’re trying to improve your sleep tonight. Start with five minutes. Whether it’s reading, meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, writing a to-do list. Eventually, extend that to 10 or 15 minutes as you see it helps you relax and wrap up your day.

A lot of athletes will have difficulty with a racing mind and don’t have a strategy in place to manage those thoughts. I try to encourage them (to first) spend 10 minutes processing those thoughts before they get into bed, typically through journaling or writing a to-do list. Some I’ll encourage to do stretching with breathing exercises to activate the parasympathetic system.

Then, do five or 10 minutes of a relaxing activity they enjoy, whether that’s listening to music or meditation. All of these should happen outside of bed because we really want the brain to associate being in bed with being asleep. The way I frame it to athletes is your sleep isn’t the end of today — it’s the beginning of tomorrow.

You work with lots of athletes and leaders who are constantly flying from time zone to time zone. What do you suggest to help ease jet lag?

This takes some advance planning. First, I’d say a framework is to think about every travel and trip as three parts: What are you doing pre-flight, in-flight and post-flight? Most individuals don’t really have a strategy, so they just fly to a new time zone and try to adapt when they get there. They haven’t factored in that there are things you can do in advance of even getting on the airplane, including prioritizing sufficient sleep the night before flying and starting to shift your body clock two or three days in advance.

Then, in flight, are you hydrating well? Are you sleeping at the appropriate time? Are you eating? Then, post-flight, when are you seeking light? Light is the most powerful signal to your brain and your body clock. Are you leveraging power naps and caffeine?

Flying East and flying West are very different. How many time zones are you going across? How long are you staying? The strategies around how you shift and when you shift are factors to consider. Are you competing at 11 a.m. or 8 p.m.? It sounds complicated, but there are some apps that can factor in when you fly, how many time zones you cross, and give you day-by-day recommendations.

Do you ever face skepticism of your work and the importance of sleep, and if so, how do you overcome that?

It can be difficult to convince athletes to invest the time, energy and effort into sleep because it does take time, but if you spent an hour investing in something that would give you a double-digit percentage benefit in terms of performance enhancement, and it was free, easy and healthy for everyone, would you want it? Most athletes say, “Of course I would want it.” It’s one of the most untapped performance enhancing drugs, really. It’s accessible to everyone, but it takes commitment to optimize your sleep every day.

I really lean on sharing some of the studies that have been done previously by my colleagues or myself with sport as evidence of how this is affecting athletes' day to day. I’ll also share some of the success stories like Andre, or working with Jeremy Lin, or Katie Ledecky with the Olympics now. Some very successful athletes in their sport recognized and integrated some of these strategies into how they train and applied it to their biggest competition.

What are the two or three most-actionable steps we can all take to improve the quality of our sleep?

One is just building in the wind-down routine. It sounds like a small tweak but going from being reactive becoming proactive to giving yourself five or 10 minutes to actually process your thoughts and wind down will change how you integrate sleep into your day to day.

Secondly, invest in sleep tools and build a travel sleep kit to optimize your sleep environment on the road. Your sleep environment should be dark, quiet, cool and comfortable.

The low-hanging fruit is we minimally need seven hours per night. It’s O.K. if you’re not at seven. If you’re getting five or six, I’d say prioritize even getting 15 minutes or 30 minutes more this week every single day. It’s the difference between an A and a B student. Small adjustments in your sleep duration and sleep habits will add up. If you can start with getting 15 minutes more sleep tonight, you’ll get a win.

Q&A Resources
Dr. Cheri Mah ― Linktree

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