Does Athletic Taping Work For Recovery?
The world of sports is something amusing. Different athletes from around the world get paid millions of dollars to play competitively, and in order to do that they must prevent themselves from getting injured. From LeBron James to Lionel Messi, these athletes train and do whatever it takes to improve their performance and body.
Unfortunately, some things in life are inevitable, whether it be bruises, burns or even major injuries like dislocations or fractures, everyone at some point in their lives has gotten injured or has at least felt some type of pain before. Sports competitors usually try to prevent injuries from occurring or from getting worse by applying athletic taping. NBA players, soccer stars or volleyball athletes tend to use these special types of taping to improve their workout, rehabilitate and avoid injuries.
What is Athletic Taping:
Athletic taping is the process of applying tape directly to the skin in order to decrease swelling and pain by helping increase the amount of blood flow to the injured area.
Kinesio-type tape (KT) adjusts to the skin and accommodates movements. As you can see, there are different kinds of taping, people can use, it really just depends on what they prefer. We have all seen athletes on the court, field or pool wearing stripes of coloured tape that are not even wrapped around the limbs or muscles like an elastic support bandage.
Instead, it is a long tape is applied to the skin and sticks on, so what type of athletic taping do athletes use?
As we are talking about athletes, the taping that would be best for them is Kinesio-type taping. Physical therapists use it to treat pain from sports injuries and boost athletic performance, among other things. Sports and Medical Orthopaedists Dominic King, DO explain how KT tape is different than the others, by saying “It’s different than your standard athletic tape, which is used to immobilize a joint. Elastic therapeutic taping has the benefit of being stretchy. When you apply it to a joint, it helps to act almost like a rubber band, supporting muscles and tendons, and taking a little stress off the joints. It also can help relieve swelling in certain areas”. Most notably basketball star James Harden, who is known as a great scorer and known for staying healthy. He is always seen regularly with a sporting KT tape on his right shoulder, and even though he is not injured, he is taking the right measure to make sure that his muscles and joints are behaving the way they should.
Houston Rockets’ Head Athletic Trainer Jason Biles commented “I’ve been in the NBA now eight years, and I’ve been using it probably seven or eight years, right when I came in. I like the KT Tape specifically because it promotes a sort of natural healing response, helping with swelling reduction, encouraging optimal movement and proper movement, and the appropriate alignment of the joints. It gives the athlete great feedback of where their body is in space — we want them to be aware of if they’re in a vulnerable position, or if they’re in the proper position they can move optimally from… So, it’s the tape that we use for those things and also just to sort of encourage the movement that we would like. So, if a joint tends to want to, say, become maligned, then we can apply some tape to encourage the proper movement to achieve what the athlete needs on the court”.
James Harden uses it mostly as injury prevention and having the tape placed on his shoulders says it has helped him mentally as well “Whenever I’m sore, whether it’s my knee or my shoulder, putting the KT Tape on gets the blood flowing and circulating around my body… I’m able to go out there and play free, not really thinking about injuries. It just gives me that confidence. It gives me the confidence to go out there and not worry about getting injured. If you’re playing free and you’re confident, great things are going to happen on the court”.
Additionally, this method can help keep muscles or bones in a certain position in order to prevent an injury from occurring. For this to happen, athletes must put the athletic taping near the joints like the ankles, wrists, and hands for added support due to the elasticity of the athletic tape. It naturally returns to its original position, which alleviates some of the athlete’s muscle strain, which is one of the benefits of the tape; however, Dr. King explains that people report feeling a little more comfortable with the tape, and it seems as if it gives them some added support, and with backed up research, it also shows that people experience short-term benefit from using the tape. “For the short term it actually can help with some joints that might be painful, for a couple of hours or maybe for a day; but it doesn’t really have that type of long-term relief, where this is going to be the only thing, you’re going to need in order to take away all of your joint pain,” he says” Dr. King explains, as research indicates that Kinesio tape may help alleviate pain for individuals who suffer from persistent musculoskeletal pain, it is in no way superior to other treatments. In addition, he asserts that there is no scientific evidence that Kinesio tape can lessen disability among people who suffer from chronic pain.
Some other short-term benefits that KT taping provides are that it helps with stabilizing ankles, supporting knees, solidifying shoulders, opening elbows, supporting weak or injured muscles, improving muscle contraction, and preventing overuse.
Finally, King goes on to mention that the tape should only be used as part of a program that also includes physical therapy to treat muscle soreness as a last resort, nor are there any long-term benefits from Kinesio taping.
Why is Athletic Taping Important?
Taping makes life easier for athletes as it can be effective for rehabilitation. Even though athletic tape can help prevent injuries brought on by exercise, accidents do still happen as it is expected to happen. Athletic tape might be the solution you need when they do. When limiting the range of motion for particular joints and muscles with conventional athletic tape, the body may heal more quickly than if the movement were unrestricted. It can also be used as a splint for sprained joints, which expedites the healing process. Traditional athletic tape can help reduce swelling by compressing the muscle, which can reduce pain and prevent further injury.
The reasons for using elastic therapeutic tape are the same but in different ways. Athletic tape reduces swelling and reduces pain by helping to increase blood flow to the injured area. The elasticity of the athletic tape can also provide the affected muscles with support. It naturally returns to its initial position, alleviating some of the athlete's muscle strain. The tape can help protect the previously injured area from re-injury and reduce pain when the athlete is well enough to resume their sport or activity.
Additionally, the athletic tape can assist in correcting any form of issues caused by injury or other conditions. A trainer can do a runner's analysis to apply the tape in the best position for their injury, which will help them fix their form and stop them from hurting themselves again. Again, Athletic Taping is more beneficial short-term than long term and shouldn’t be depended on without addressing injuries.
How can athletic taping help you?
Whether you’re a competitive athlete or just want to stay healthy, KT taping can help you to reduce injuries and feel your best.
And we offer sports taping at Flow Spa.
Flow Spa is the premier float therapy and sports recovery centre in Peterborough, Ontario.
Our centre focuses on helping people deal with stress and pain so that they can recover and feel better.
We ensure that we make our customer’s experience better than any other float centres. As a team, we provide the customer’s needs and wants and deliver phenomenal services.
Our mission is to provide the ultimate relaxing and rejuvenating experience to help you ease your stress and pain.
Flow Spa has the best tools and treatment options available: float therapy, massage therapy, reflexology, reiki, infrared saunas, cold plunges, contrast therapy, Normatec compression therapy, and health coaching.
KT Taping can be included as part of your massage therapy session. Book your appointment online and mention you want taping done or give us a call at 705-230-8575.
Float Therapy for Sports Performance
Here’s a sports trivia question for you:
What do the New England Patriots, Golden State Warriors, The Manchester United Football Club, Michael Phelps, and Peterborough’s own Cody Crowley all have in common?
Looking at this lineup it’s easy to think “well, these teams and individual athletes all have performed and won at the very pinnacle of their sport!”
And indeed, they are all winners, but that’s not all. They also used float tanks.
And they aren’t alone either.
The New Zealand All Blacks, the Chicago Blackhawks, The Seattle Seahawks, Carl Lewis, J.J. Watt, Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, and many other professional teams and athletes have added floating into their training and recovery programs to gain a performance edge.
Floating is one of the best-kept secrets used by high-performing athletes and there’s lots of good research that helps to back up why athletes benefit from floating.
Raising the Bar - Performance and Visualization with Float Tanks
If someone told you that laying in complete darkness while suspended weightlessly in saltwater could give you superhuman strength, speed, and accuracy, would you believe them? It’s may not be as bold a statement as it sounds.
Research on floating and sports performance found that high-level athletes who had reached a plateau saw a rebound improvement in performance after floating in conjunction with visualization techniques. The performance increase was seen even without additional physical training.
Therefore, athletes were able to increase their performance just by floating before a competition by using that time for mental imagery of their sport. A follow-up study not only confirmed the results of the original research but showed that floating multiple times between games or competitions led to significant improvements compared to just a single float.
This confirms something that most floaters already know - the more you float the better it is for you.
Improving Accuracy in Target Sports
Beyond just looking at general athletic performance and floating, a few studies from research groups have looked at specific benefits linked to floating in athletes.
Several of these studies have tested how floating affects marksmanship in different fields including rifle marksmanship, darts, and archery.
In the rifle study, 75% of the participants saw a statistically significant increase in accuracy from pre- to post-float compared to no such increase found in the control group that relaxed but did not float.
A similar result was found in the study on darts performance with 80% of the participants' improved accuracy.
In both studies, these improvements were seen regardless of skill level.
While the archery study didn’t see any significant increase in accuracy after just one float session, It did find that the floaters had more consistent scores than the group that sat in a chair and relaxed for the equivalent amount of time. Likely due to the lower perceived exertion and muscle stiffness during the archery test.
Float Tanks Reduce Recovery Time
One of the suggested reasons for the benefits described above and how they lead to improved sports performance is through stress reduction. But there’s, even more, to take into account with how floating can help physical performance.
Going deeper with athletes on a physiological level, researchers in a 2013 float tank study looked at the effect floating has on lactic acid build-up.
Athletes are always looking for ways to mitigate the effects of lactate buildup in the muscles during and after a workout or competition as a way to maximize their performance.
It was found that floating after exercise showed a 62% reduction in lactic acid buildup compared to the control group.
The participants in the study also reported feeling less pain and were able to return to a peak performance level sooner.
In 2016 another study was able to repeat these findings in a larger sample size of athletes over 9 different sports. In this study not only was lactic acid reduced, but there was also a significant reduction in muscle soreness and improved mood and reduced fatigue in the participants that floated.
Looking at the Big Picture of Float Tanks on Sports Performance
Taking all of these benefits into account, it becomes clear why floating has been one of the best-kept secrets of successful athletes. Stress needs to be kept under control to perform at a peak level. On top of this, floating can help athletes stay sharp mentally.
And maybe the best part of all of this is that floating is helpful for athletes at all skill levels. You don’t need to be a professional for it to benefit you. whether you’re recovering from a long run or a weekend baseball tournament, floating can help your recovery to keep doing what you love.
Learn even more about sports recovery at Flow Spa here.
You Need To Recover Up
Train hard. Recover hard. Recovery is the next hottest wave in fitness. It's what keeps professional athletes, professional athletes. It's a must-do for both extreme fitness types and sports enthusiasts of all varieties, from runners to yogis. Now, for those who strive toward the seven day, power-packed workout schedule, but instead spend a few days each week in reality-stricken guilt...recovery is the best trend to happen to exercise since smoothie counters.
Recovery: It's not what it sounds like, exactly. After a training session or intense workout, recovery is the process of your body restoring (healing) itself — muscles receive the nutrients they need to reenergize, hormones rebalance and the central nervous system gets a moment to repair. Active bodies need to focus just as much on recovery as they do training, not just for relaxation, but also for endurance and injury prevention. Side note: recovery does not mean mere downtime; it means efficient downtime.
For ages, athletes have been using the perks of infrared therapy as a secret recovery weapon. Not only is it an oh-so-soothing, mind/body experience, but it's also a great way to maximize downtime between workouts. Infrared light waves heat the body directly (unlike a traditional sauna that heats the air) and increase your body's core temperature (which increases circulation and blood flow, so it's like working out — without working out).
First off, there are two types of recovery: one that puts you at a standstill under doctor's orders, and one that restores your body. Even though sometimes, after a feisty-fitness session (like when you wake up the next morning with concrete legs and an appreciation for the elderly climbing stairs), you might feel like passive recovery is the best option...it's not. You move a little, you feel a lot better.
Passive Recovery.Is what helps repair certain types of injury. It's when the body is resting, which includes sleep, a healthy diet, and applying compression. It involves doing almost nothing.
Active Recovery. Helps the body flush out and release the nutrients it needs to repair itself, as it gently gets your circulation going, without loading your body with resistance or impact. So, walking, stretching, Frisbee, some light dancing, infrared-sauna-ing...
A DOSE of Recovery
. Passive & Active Are Both Welcome. Infrared therapy both heals and prevents injury.
. Just heat it (heat it)! Infrared saunas enhance blood flow, delivering nutrients to the body, without over-challenging the muscles that need a little rest.
. Clean Up After Yourself. In a sauna, with blood moving and sweat excreting, your body is releasing toxins (that could be impeding your overall performance gusto).
. Loosen up.FYI, muscles and joints love circulation. Give them circulation and a moment of rest, now that's a relax and repair win-win.
Let's take another tip from the pro athletes. Those who sport-a-living, literally, also favor infrared sauna use because it leads to an increase in HGH. What is HGH? It's the human growth hormone, naturally produced by the body in the pituitary gland, and, as its name suggests, it's responsible for cell growth and regeneration. An increase in HGH is beneficial for many reasons including repairing tissue, healthy organs, and skin — a.k.a. it's a look good, feel-good hormone everyone wants more of.
While an injured athlete may be restrained from activity, infrared saunas boost HGH, which not only stimulates recovery, it releases endorphins — a way to avoid workout FOMO. In other words, say you're a runner and you can't run for injury reasons...infrared saunas give you that runner's high, while also burning calories, while also helping your body heal.
Good recovery, good recoup. Infrared provides hyperthermic conditioning, which is a fancy way of saying that infrared exposure helps you stand the heat, so you don't get stuck in the kitchen. By acclimating the body's core temperature to feelin' hot-hot-hot, you prep your physical endurance later on...for say, a sweaty summer marathon, or an outdoor, asphalt-grounded basketball game.
Book a HigherDOSE sauna after, before, or in-between workouts. Oh, and try these everyday recovery tips, too.
About Balance. Always plan recovery into your workout schedule, as a part of your workout schedule, to keep a healthy balance.
Break or Risk Breakage. Allow 24-72 hours between intense training sessions, focusing your workout on other areas of the body, and implementing proper downtime.
Zzz. Lack of sleep reduces tolerance, affects your mood, and increases both physical and mental fatigue.
Cheers! Hydrate. There's never a better-yourself list that doesn't include proper hydration.
On The Inside. Diet. During recovery, good nutrition is required to properly rebuild muscle tissue and rebalance enzymes and hormones.
You've Got Options. Ice baths, cold showers, cryotherapy... Don't let the wellness lexicon fool you, recovery doesn't have to be redundant.
Bodywork.Getting a massage helps optimize recovery and relieve pain where it's needed, and so does osteopath and acupuncture (yeah, it's a tough life).
Roll Out. You know when you pull a thread on a sweater, and then suddenly, half the sweater just bunches up into nothing? That same thing can happen to our bodies (thanks to factors like stress, dehydration, injury, and repetitive activity, etcetera, etcetera.), like when you feel pain in your knee but actually, your shoulder is injured. Myofascial release techniques target and smooth out those small-yet-unexpectedly-impactful tensions. Go for the foam form — using a foam roller is a great form of self-myofascial release.
Article Originally Published at HigherDose.com
Cover Photo by Dylan Sauerwein on Unsplash
Does an hour of floating actually equal six hours of sleep?
Whenever something new meets Pop Media headlines, there’s a tendency for whatever tasty nugget might be included in this new thing to be sensationalized to attract greater readership. This “clickbait” opportunity has not been missed even on float therapy and sensory deprivation tanks.
While the comparisons to a portal to “Upside Down” from Stranger Things is often no longer included in the lexicon, the quote that is continuously blown out of proportion is in regards to the restorative effects of floating and sleep. Depending on which news source you’re reading, you’ll often see it stated that an hour of floating is equivalent to anywhere from four to six hours of sleep.
The most recent news blast that has likely proliferated this claim again was when Josh McDaniels from the New England Patriots said that 45 minutes in the tank was equal to four hours of sleep - extrapolate this and I think that is why people are now pushing the claim that an hour of floating is equal to six hours of sleep.
Is this really the case?
Let’s break down the components of this claim and decipher the reality from what is exaggerated.
What We Know About Floating as it Relates to Relaxation
Floating is a powerful way to combat stress and anxiety and multiple clinical studies have validated this claim. The absence of any external stimuli often allows your brain to sort things out on its own and realize that everything we stress about on a day-to-day basis doesn’t have to be such a big issue.
Because the brain doesn’t have all five senses providing input during a float session, our brain wave frequencies are able to settle down into a deeper state of relaxation. This relaxed state is called theta brainwaves and is the same state that expert meditators reach and we all achieve during REM sleep and dreaming.
Figure 1. This chart from my Oura ring shows the different sleep stages that I was in throughout the night. You can see that most deep sleep comes in the earlier half of your nightly slumber and REM comes during the latter part.
It sounds then very much like floating is pretty much the same as sleeping, right?
REM sleep is only one component of our total nightly sleep cycle. It often comes in the later stages of sleep and is associated with creativity and memory consolidation. REM sleep also plays an important role in re-energizing your mind and body. Reaching a theta brainwave state while floating is, therefore, one of the reasons why people love floating for the boost in creativity and energy that they get.
Most of the later hours of sleep are dedicated to REM (see Figure 1).
Sleep is a fascinating component of our lives and has a multitude of aspects that are necessary for good health, REM being just one of them. Another very important part of sleep is the deep sleep stage which is when our bodies release a beneficial cascade of hormones to help repair and grow muscle, making it the most restorative sleep segment.
There is no evidence thus far that floating can induce a deep sleep state and the associated release of healing hormones (that is unless you sleep in a float tank).
This is where making claims like sleep replacing 6 hours of sleep can cross the line from benefit to simply being misleading because people who only get about 6 hours of sleep each night might think that they can get away with replacing that with an hour float. (6 hours of sleep is simply not enough, for more on this read the excellent book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker)
Perhaps an even bigger issue with people making claims like this is that it puts floating at risk of being converted from a trend into a fad and lumped into the likes of fidget spinners and pogs.
Floating has strong scientific support that is growing every day but if we keep having people trying to sensationalize it for a quick buck or clickbait then it’s going to start being that much harder to get further research taken seriously if floating is just seen as quackery.
How To Use Float Therapy To Help Treat Your Back Pain
As a competitive strongman athlete, I’m no stranger to back pain. Whether it’s the usual soreness that comes after deadlifting 700 lb. or the occasional low back muscle strain that leaves me out of commission for several days to weeks, back pain is unsurprisingly common in strongman.
Floating For Pain Relief Series - Part 1
Why do you float?
There are many ways that a float tank can be used to improve your life; from mental health to chronic pain to sports performance, float therapy has a truly impressive resume of benefits. In this series, we’re going to dive into the different benefits of floating and see what both the research and the people floating on a regular basis say about the benefits of this futuristic recovery vessel.
The focus of this first series of posts will be around pain, both chronic and acute, and how the warmth and density of the Epsom salt-filled waters work like a fountain of youth for all kinds of pain conditions.
As a competitive strongman athlete, I’m no stranger to back pain. Whether it’s the usual soreness that comes after deadlifting 700 lb. or the occasional low back muscle strain that leaves me out of commission for several days to weeks, back pain is unsurprisingly common in strongman.
Staying one step ahead of my injuries is the best remedy of all and combined with more acute treatments at the time a flare-up of back pain occurs, I’m able to get right back to training and competing sooner. In addition to daily stretching and movement to keep my muscles firing correctly, floating has become a key component of my recovery protocol for staying in the game. Floating not only to allow my mind to rest and focus better but because the support and buoyancy of the float tank solution allow all of the muscles in my back to completely relax while also decompressing my spine.
This therapeutic effect of float tanks on muscle tension pain, particularly in the back and neck, has been researched and shown to provide a significant benefit compared to a control group receiving no treatment for their pain (Kjellgren et al., 2000).
As I relax into the float tank to start my session, all the pressure and tension in my low back starts to drift away immediately. After a few minutes of finding my perfect position, I can almost start to feel my back elongate and decompress and in a much gentler way than if I were to use an inversion table or hang from a pull-up bar to stretch out. This becomes much more noticeable when you get out of the float tank after your session and you can feel yourself stand taller.
This has been reported almost unanimously as one of the most dramatic and immediate improvements that floating can offer as kyphotic customers leave their float sessions standing tall and proud once more.
Bulged discs get the relief they need to heal and over time subside.
Neck pain from being desk-bound or due to whiplash and traumatic accidents are no match, as your body is gently relaxed and supported from all directions to return to the most natural position possible.
But the benefits of floating for treating pain don’t end with back and neck tension. As we continue this series on floating for pain, you’ll find out even more about the myriad ways that float therapy can benefit both acute and chronic pain syndromes.
Book Your Float at Flow Spa in Peterborough today.
Sweet Dreams: 9 Ways You Can Sleep Better Tonight
Sleep is so important to health and performance that the next stage in the evolution of talking about sleep is that it will become a regular prescription from doctors.
When we think about sleep, the world has shifted to considering it that stretch of time where we have lost productivity from the constant grind and hustle that is preached by entrepreneurs and professionals alike. But the reality is that quality sleep is one of the most important factors for improving productivity and performance. It’s no wonder that professional athletes like LeBron James and Hafthor Bjornsson get upwards of 10 hours of sleep each night.
If you struggle to recover from heavy training or your progress isn’t as good as you expect it to be, your sleep should be one of the first places you look to make a change that will benefit you. Even if how good your workouts are isn’t a primary factor that you use to gauge how you feel, sleep quality will dramatically affect your performance at work and your mood.
In getting a quality night’s sleep, the term that is often used now is “sleep hygiene” and it refers to the different steps that you can do to make your sleeping domicile (aka the bear cave) as conducive for sleep as possible.
I find this to be particularly important as a competitive strongman athlete because for many of us our sleep isn’t great to start with due to a prevalence of sleep apnea. If you’ve gone through and made changes in the following nine steps and still don’t feel well-rested, you should consult a sleep lab to get a sleep test done to see if you’ve got sleep apnea or any other sleep disorder that can be treated. Using a CPAP for treating sleep apnea will make an immense difference in your quality of sleep, recovery, performance, and well-being.
In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker put together the most comprehensive account for the fascinating effects of sleep. Walker outlines a multitude of sleep hygiene steps that can be taken to hit that recommended sweet spot of 8 hours of sleep each night.
A lot of it comes down to how well you prepare your nighttime ritual to prepare yourself and your bear cave for deep slumber. Here are some of the most important steps I have found to help, as well as some additional tips that may be worth checking out.
Steps to improve sleep hygiene (roughly in order based on the timeline before bed)
10+ Hours Before Bed
Avoid Caffeine - typically most people should stop around 1 pm if they aim to sleep around 10 or 11. Even if that afternoon pick-me-up doesn’t leave you feeling jittery, there may still be enough caffeine floating around in your system to impact your sleep quality and make it more difficult to fall asleep.
3 Hours Before Bed
No Strenuous Exercise - getting your heart rate pounding within a few hours of your scheduled bedtime can make it harder to relax and fall asleep. If that’s the only time you have available to workout and it’s a priority in your life, training may just have to come before sleep quality but you can also consider going to bed earlier and waking up earlier to get your workout in.
No Big Meals - Eating to the point of discomfort means your body has a lot to process and digest and can leave you feeling like you’ve got a rock pressing down while you’re trying to get comfortable for sleep. You also want to ideally time your last meal around the 3-hour mark so your stomach isn’t grumbling either as you try to fall asleep.
1-2 Hours Before Bed
Keep the Bear Cave Cool - You’ll want to start to drop the temperature in your room in the last couple of hours of the day, as one of the factors that trigger your brain that it’s time to sleep is a drop in temperature. Before we had temperature controlled houses, the temperature while sleeping in a hut or cave dropped as the sun went down and we went to sleep. It’s usually recommended that you set your room somewhere in the 65-68 F range and you’ll have to play around with this to find your own sweet spot. An additional tip you can try is sleeping with socks on. Your feet like to be a little bit warmer than the rest of your body for the best sleep possible.
Electronics out of the Bedroom - this really should be 24 hours before sleep thing because everyone who values quality sleep can agree that electronics need to be removed from the bedroom. When we watch tv in bed we tend to go to sleep later and the same thing goes for watching videos on YouTube or scrolling social media. It also ties into the next tip...
Blue lights out Before Bed - Depending on what time you go to bed relative to the cycle of the sun, this may even come before the 1-2 hour mark but blue lights should be eliminated as early in the evening as possible. Set all of your devices to Night Shift towards a warmer tone. I like to have mine automatically set to follow the sunrise/sunset cycle. This will also help to reduce eye strain if you find yourself constantly staring at the blue light. Taking it a step further, you can buy a set of blue light blocking glasses on Amazon for about 10 or 30 bucks depending on how fancy you want them to look.
In getting rid of this blue light before bed, it also means you should shut down the tv, tablet, and phone and read an actual book. If you’re in the market for switching out your light bulbs in the bedroom, you can also replace any bulbs with a colour-changing LED bulb that can shift towards a red light, like the Philips Hue. This is the ideal way to go about it. The best compromises that you can make would be to dim your existing lights and then use an offline e-reader so you aren’t being distracted with messages or phone calls when you’re trying to wind down for sleep. The backlight of a Kindle can be turned way down so that you can simply illuminate the page with your dimmed light the way you would for a hard copy.
Have a Contrast Shower or a Hot Bath - In Why We Sleep it’s suggested that you take a hot bath to prepare yourself for sleep because as you get out of the hot water, your brain will notice the dramatic temperature gradient and signal your body to prepare for sleep. I can’t stand getting so hot before sleeping so another option that many people including myself prefer is to do a contrast shower starting with hot and ending on cold. Typically this consists of alternating between 10 seconds of hot and 20 seconds of cold for a total of 8 to 10 cycles. I like that ending on cold gets you out of the shower with the temperature drop already started so you’re on your way to sleepy town. The contrast also works nicely before bed because I’ve found that simply doing cold may get you too cold which actually makes it harder to sleep.
Block EMFs in Your Home - I’m still not convinced that there’s much merit to these claims but it has been suggested that electromagnetic fields from electronic devices and WiFi routers are negatively affecting our health, including sleep quality. If you follow all of the steps above and still have a hard time getting quality sleep, you may have to “ground” yourself and eliminate EMFs. The simplest way to do this is to put all devices on airplane mode and turn off your WiFi router during the night. Plugging your router into an automatic wall timer may be the simplest way to accomplish this without having to remember to turn your WiFi router off and back on.
Bonus Tip: Know Yourself - the Oura Ring
The Oura ring is the most comprehensive sleep and recovery tracker that I have seen on the market. With the combination of sleep tracking and heart rate variability (HRV), Oura helps you to go a step beyond just “feels” to know how well you’re recovering and how prepared you are for training each day. If you’ve been working out for any appreciable amount of time, hopefully, you are introspective enough about how you feel in order to know fairly well what your body is dictating your training should be like each day. In using the Oura ring daily for two months now, I’ve noticed that much of how I think I feel is reflected in my score each day. The ring is sensitive enough though that you can get into the very fine details about things like how well you’re sleeping based on what time you ate your last meal or even what type of foods you ate at dinner (or throughout the day). Sleep can be messed up in all sorts of ways due to the foods we eat by throwing off blood sugar and stressing the body with highly inflammatory foods or foods that we are allergic or intolerant to.
The Oura ring also gets smarter as you continue to use it and it’s able to detect your own trends better. This makes it a neat tool to use short-term but a much more valuable part of your reflection on training and recovery as you use it more regularly. I said the same thing a few years ago when I wrote more about using HRV for training.
(If you are concerned about the EMFs from this little device you can also put it on airplane mode and only take it off airplane mode when you want to upload your data).
This sort of next-level biohacking is what can take your overall sleep and well-being from whatever mediocre state it currently is into being at your own pinnacle of health. It does take more conscious effort but if at the end of the day you are living a more fulfilling life or striving towards your goals better, it can be well worth it.
Sleep Well!
You Can Use the Same Technique World-Class Athletes Do to Improve Performance. Here’s How.
I find a comfortable position and close my eyes. As I focus on my breathing, my attention becomes immersed in the present moment. Everything and nothing is within my awareness.
Now it’s time to perform. It’s time to visualize.
I find a comfortable position and close my eyes. As I focus on my breathing, my attention becomes immersed in the present moment. Everything and nothing is within my awareness.
Now it’s time to perform. It’s time to visualize.
With my body and mind relaxed I turn my attention to my sport - strongman. We usually know ahead of the competition what the events are going to be. Just like football players watching tape of the opposing team, knowing what lifts we are going to do gives us time to prepare so that we can put on a better show and reduce the likelihood of injury.
I picture the setting - outside on the grass, hot, sunny day. There’s a good crowd cheering us on as we perform these odd feats of strength. I can see the ref’s face as he calls me up for my turn to lift. The picture is painted in vivid detail and when I go to pick up the stone into my lap my muscles and nervous system feel the strain as if I were actually doing the lift. An explosion of movement launches the stone onto the platform and I can see myself shuffling laterally to pick up the next stone and load it as well. This continues for the final two stones to complete the run.
With intense concentration time becomes distorted but if I time it, it will all be over in less than 20 seconds in my mind. My actual time on the day of the competition - 18.2 seconds.
This is how visualization works and it’s a not-so-well-kept-secret performance technique used by almost every world-class athlete who has become a household name.
Michael Phelps and the rest of the U.S. swim team practice visualization under the watchful eye of coach Bob Bowman. They do this not in place of but in addition to the monstrous metres they put into the actual pool. They know exactly how many strokes they will complete wall-to-wall and can get their visualized swim times down to within milliseconds of their actual race times.
Steph Curry regularly uses a float tank to visualize his three-point shots as the sensory deprived environment is the ideal space to quiet his mind and achieve complete focus on performance.
The human brain is wired with what are called mirror neurons - these are neurons that fire when seeing someone else perform an action as well as when you imagine yourself completing an action. Brain scanning techniques like EEG and fMRI have validated that our brains fire as if we physically performed a movement when we only just imagined it.
Scientists have helped people suffering from the phantom limb pain of amputated limbs get a release of their tension through visualization and athletes who visualize the performance of their sport see a statistically significant increase in performance compared with those who spend their recovery days laying around on the couch playing Xbox.
This all sounds fun in theory if you’re an athlete right? Here’s the cool part: visualization isn’t just for sports performance; anything that you can imagine yourself doing can be improved through focused visualization. Musicians can visualize the performance of their song, a chef can see their flawless knife work, and a lecturer giving a keynote speech can visualize the presentation going without a hitch. If you can visualize it, you can physically improve upon it. Albeit these everyday examples are not as strenuous as sports performance and so they can be practiced more frequently but taking the time to see yourself perfectly executing the action in your own mind can help to hone it further to perfection.
How do you get started with visualization?
Pick a quiet, comfortable place to do your visualization practice. Your favourite meditation corner is perfect. Float tanks also work really well because you’ve given yourself permission to spend a distraction-free hour immersed in the present moment.
Spend a few minutes focusing on your breathing. Relax and breath deeply.
When you’re ready, start to imagine the scene around your activity in vivid detail like the example from the opening paragraph of this article. You may have to do some research if you’re performing in a setting you’re unfamiliar with but the more detail you can generate, the more realistic you can make your visualization practice.
Picture yourself in minute detail going through the performance. If done with enough effort and focus, your muscles may tense and your heart rate may spike - particularly if it’s a physically intense performance that you are imagining.
Repeat the practice as much as needed. Practice makes perfect and one of the reasons athletes like visualization so much is that they can continue to do the repetitive practice without putting the same physical strain on their bodies.
Alex Honnold might be the best athlete in the world and yet most people have never heard his name and wouldn’t recognize what his physically unassuming body is capable of.
In the summer of 2017, Alex approached the base of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park with a pair of rock climbing shoes and a bag of chalk and began to free solo what is considered by many to be the most difficult sheer granite face to climb in the world.
Free soloing means there are no ropes and harness for if the climber happens to fall.
It takes most climbers 3 or 4 days to summit El Cap but that’s also out of the question for Alex climbing free solo since he has no way of taking a nap to recover. But Alex won’t need it.
In 3 hours and 56 minutes, Alex completed the climb to the summit of El Capitan. He was deep within the flow state to complete this performance and attests to the practice of visualizing the entire climb to getting his mindset right to complete this seemingly impossible feat.
Jump to 7:46 in the video below to hear Alex talking about his visualization practice.
Imagine being by yourself in the dead center of a 3,000-foot vertical cliff -- without a rope to catch you if you fall. For professional rock climber Alex Honnold, this dizzying scene marked the culmination of a decade-long dream.