How to improve your sleep
Sleep is vital for not only the recovery of your muscles but your mind. It also plays an influential role on your appetite hormones. Jockeys, trackwork riders and race horse trainers all have something in common - you’re shift workers. Shift workers have a harder time maintaining their weight because their sleep pattern or internal clock has been disturbed. This then causes an imbalance in appetite hormones. Unfortunately these hours at the track are out of your control. The odds are then stacked against you trying to make weight.
So how do we limit these impacts? You can control the quality and amount of sleep you get. See my video below for 4 basic tips to help improve your sleep. This will give better control over your appetite and weight. For more detail keep reading below.
Why is sleep so important? Apart from the above poor sleep and shift work can negatively impact our ability to process food, food we crave and our appetite. Sleep is not only important for recovery but our overall health, wellbeing and survival. It is as important as air, water and food. For athletes like jockeys poor sleep can impact performance, our immune system, learning, memory and energy.
How is sleep regulated? Sleep is regulated through the sleep homeostat and our internal body clock (circadian clock). The sleep homeostat is essentially a system in our body that measures how long we are awake and then how much sleep we need to catch up. The “body clock” is the internal clock that is synchronized by 24-hours. It controls the timing of our core body temperature, hormone production, alertness, sleepiness and performance. It is controlled internally and externally through cues; work patterns, clocks, light and darkness.
When sleep is disturbed in terms of a shift worker the “body clock” is thrown off course. As a jockey you’re awake at 3am when in fact you’re meant to be in your deepest sleep. You’re then fighting against this natural internal clock to stay awake. Now if this is combined with lack of sleep, less than 7-hours per day, appetite hormones are disrupted. Therefore not helping you maintain light weight easily. Now as a jockey, track work rider or trainer there is nothing that can be done to change the hours you work. What we can do is improve the quality and amount of sleep you get. This will therefore help with your weight management. Here are some tips below.
TRACK YOUR SLEEP - understanding how many hours you’re currently getting will help you see where your baseline is. From there you can increase your hours accordingly and see the results. If you physically can’t get more hours of sleep catch up by having a nap after track work or on the road to the races if you’re not driving. If you normally drive, try car pool or jump in the truck with someone. Car pooling although you may have to drive sometimes with other jockeys will give you more opportunities to sleep than you’re currently getting.
IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF SLEEP
a. Be sure you’re sleeping in a dark room - use black out curtains and ensure no electronics are flashing in your room
b. Be sure your bedroom is for relaxing and sleep only. Try not to work in your room or have electronics.
c. A cool environment - you sleep better between 18-22 degrees Celsius.
d. Limit distractions - don’t have a television in your room. Also do not watch screens before bed. They can keep you up longer as the screens light will effect your internal body clock.
e. Reduce caffeine and alcohol.
f. Minimise noise - where possible obviously if you have a small child this can be difficult.
In summary sleep is as important as our diets for weight management and recovery. There is a difference between being able to function on 4-5 hours of sleep and adequate sleep for performance. Have a go and let me know if you notice any differences to your appetite, weight management and overall recovery.
If you want to learn more about Sleep & Circardian Rhythm I’d recommend the webinar from “Education in Nutrition” by Dr Sarah Jay who is a sleep researcher.
Weigh in way better!
Megan