Peak is a groundbreaking book exploring the fundamentals of high performance (not the fads), the importance of consistency (not extreme effort), and the value of patience (not rapid transformation). Dr. Marc Bubbs makes deep science easy to understand, and with information from leading experts who are influencing the top performers in sports on how to achieve world-class success, he lays out the record-breaking feats of athleticism and strategies that are rooted in this personalized approach.
Peak is a groundbreaking book exploring the fundamentals of high performance (not the fads), the importance of consistency (not extreme effort), and the value of patience (not rapid transformation). Dr. Marc Bubbs makes deep science easy to understand, and with information from leading experts who are influencing the top performers in sports on how to achieve world-class success, he lays out the record-breaking feats of athleticism and strategies that are rooted in this personalized approach.
Peak is a groundbreaking book exploring the fundamentals of high performance (not the fads), the importance of consistency (not extreme effort), and the value of patience (not rapid transformation). Dr. Marc Bubbs makes deep science easy to understand, and with information from leading experts who are influencing the top performers in sports on how to achieve world-class success, he lays out the record-breaking feats of athleticism and strategies that are rooted in this personalized approach.
SLEEP AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS (27
Sleep Pressure and Circadian Rhythms
Now that you have a better understanding of how decreased sleep time,
poorer sleep quality, and even a single night of bad sleep can hamper per-
formance, le’ circle back to sleep physiology and discuss the two driving
factors that trigger sleep onset: circadian rhythm and sleep pressure. Sleep
pressure is a simple phenomenon — the longer you've been awake, the
sleepier you feel and the greater your drive to seek sleep. Sleep pressure
helps to promote sleepiness in preparation for sleep and recovery via the
buildup of a compound called adenosine in your brain. The longer you've
been awake, the more buildup of adenosine and the sleepier you feel. Have
you ever wondered exactly why coffee keeps you awake? It produces its
stimulant effect via caffeine, which inhibits the binding of adenosine to
receptors in the brain, delaying how sleepy you feel. This is important to
consider because caffeine can clearly support superiorathletic performance,
but it might also come ata cost (depending on timing, dose, and your indi-
vidual genetic response to caffeine). Ifyou don’tuse caffeine judiciously and
personalize the frequency and dose, it can quickly compromise your sleep
quality, health, recovery, and ultimately performance.
Ik’s mot just sleep pressure that influences wakefulness; circadian
rhythms —your internal body clock that runs on an approximate 24-hour
cycle —also play a fundamental role. After billions of years of evolution, the
only predictable cue for our brains has been the rising and setting sun, which
happens every day without fail. The light and dark eycles are hardwired
into the deepest parts of our brain. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN),
located at the intersection of your optic nerves behind your eyes, samples
the incoming light from each eye as it travels to the back of your brain for
interpretation. The SCN in your brain is like the offensive coordinator on
4 football team, relaying information from one input to another. The SCN
relays the incoming information from the light and dark cycles of the day
to your brain using melatonin as its key messenger. Not long after the sun
goes down, the SCN programs the release of melatonin from the pineal
gland deep in your brain, signaling that it’s time to wind down and prepare
{or sleep. Melatonin helps to regulate the timing of your sleep, telling your
brain thae darkness is coming. Throughout the night, your melatonin levels
gradually decline. As the first morning light hits your eyelids, production of
melatonin is blunted, and your pineal gland effectively turns off the mela
tonin tap. This gives the signals to your brain that it's time to start the day.28) PEAK
Daylight isa primary cue to keep your body clock running on time, but
it isn't the only external circadian cue. Your brain’s SCN is a major mulki-
tasker, also coordinating your daily body temperature, which fluctuates
throughout the day as well. Your body temperature drops in the evening,
reaches low point few hours afer you fall asleep, rises again in the morn:
ing, and peaks during the day. This occurs in syne, which changes in light
and darkness and would still happen even if you pulled an all-nighter and
didn’t sleep a wink. In fact, in a recent interview with sleep expert Dr. Dan
Pardi, PhD, he explained that researchers believe temperature changes in
cour fingertips might be the first external trigger to the brain to set waking
patterns. Other external cues include your first meal of the day, caffeine
intake, movement, and even socializing with friends. These are called zeit-
_gebers, from the German word for “synchronizing.” While daylight is the
‘most powerful of these external cues, these other variables can be manipu-
lated and timed to support healthy circadian chythms or when adjusting to
Finally, each person also has a degree of variability in their individual
chronotype, which isthe time of day they naturally prefer to wake and sleep.
Thave many clients who love to get up as carly as 4:30 a.m. to exercise or get
started on work, long before most people even get out of bed. These uber-
achievers, oftentimes CEOs and high-level executives, aren't staying up
‘until last call at the bar but rather tuck into bed early around 9 oF 10 p.m. In
the research, morning people are referred to as morning lark chronotypes,
and they make up about 40 percent of the population. But not everyone
rruns on this pattern. Teens and adolescents are more genetically hardwired
to stay up later and sleep in longer; this chronotype is called a night owl,
making up approximately 30 percent of the population (the remaining 30
percent are intermediates, somewhere in between). In fact, the night owls
can often suffer from social jetlag, which occurs when their late night
preferred pattern doesn't fit in with society's typical 9 to 5 workday. This
can be a major problem for cognition. The prefrontal cortex area of your
brain sits directly above your eyes and acts a little bit like the quarterback
of the brain, coordinating high-level thought, reasoning, and emotional
control. If you regularly go to bed Tate and wake up early, your prefrontal
cortexis slow to get up to the line of scrimmage and call the plays, and itcan
take some time before it hits its stride. This makes sleep debta bigger prob:
lem for late sleepers than early risers, with research showing higher rates ofSLEEP AND CIRCADIAN RHYTHMS (29
anxiety, depression, diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.” Thankfully, while
your chronotype appears to be strongly genetically linked, the zeitgeber
strategies previously discussed can help to shift your patterns.
Circadian Timing and Athletic Performance
Circadian rhythms are interesting from a science perspective, but as an
athlete you might be wondering how it impacts your ability to perform,
‘Actually, circadian rhythms ean play a major role in athletic performance,
as the time of day seems to have a big influence on your ability to achieve
success, Research on Olympic athletes has uncovered that the chance of
breaking an Olympic record is highest in the early afternoon, the natural
peak ofthe human circadian rhythm.” Not convinced? In the NFL over the
last 40 years, researchers have analyzed the impact of circadian rhythm on
performance for the West Coast teams traveling to the East Coast to play
night games. The sport scientists included 106 games played at 8 p.m. East-
cern Time (by West Coast teams traveling east) in order to assess the impact
ofan earlier circadian “home body clock” on performance. The results were
staggering, During the evening games, the West Coast teams beat the point
spread in 66 percent of those games!*! The experts believe it’s because West
Coast teams are operating on a3-hour time difference, and their body clock
istunedin toalate afternoon West Coast time, which tends to be correlated
to superior performance. So what about day games? Interestingly, visiting
‘West Coast teams experienced no such advantage in daytime games played
con the East Coast. These results highlight che dramatic effects late afer-
noon and early evening circadian rhythms have on physical performance.
Sleep expert Michele Lastella, PhD, provides more evidence of a cit
cadian performance effect. He highlights some of the earliest research in
athlete chronotypes, noting that morning larks have significantly higher
batting averages in day versus night games.** The time of day professional
dart players compete also has a significant impact on their performance,
as throwing accuracy is strongly associated with time of competition.
Researchers believe there is an opportunity in circadian timing, and that
playing close to the circadian peak in performance might demonstrate a
palpable athletic advantage over those who are playing at other times. In
fact, if you compare aerobic and anaerobic fitness on a cycle ergometer
between morning and afternoon training sessions, both men and women
perform better in the afternoon, improving by 5.1 percent and 5.6 percent