Day in and day out for three straight weeks, they push their bodies to the limits of human endurance, racing over mountains under the hot summer sun with their hearts hammering for hours, as their stomachs churn through thousands of grams of carbs in a fast-moving peloton. At any given moment, they could see a chance to sprint into a race-winning break. They need to be switched on from the start line to the finish of every stage, and by the time they cross the line and get in the bus to drive to the next hotel, they are physically and mentally exhausted, with too few hours left before they have to do it all again.

Making sure that those hours are as restful as possible is critical to racing performance at the Tour de France. To give yourself the chance to win a stage, you need to make sure that you are recovered from the last ones.

Our team’s staff works hard to make sure our riders recover better. We make sure that our athletes’ nutrition is dialed, that they each get a massage, and that they travel from the finish line to the hotel in the comfort of our state-of-the-art team bus. We support our riders’ recovery with tools like Incrediwear recovery sleeves and braces, which are designed to enhance circulation and reduce muscle fatigue after intense efforts. Riders often use Incrediwear products post-stage and while traveling between stages to keep their legs feeling fresh.

The most important factor for their recovery is a simple one: sleep is the human body’s most effective recovery mode.

Every minute that our riders can spend fast asleep will help them race faster at the Tour de France. That is a challenge when their bodies and minds are under so much stress and they are moving from city to town around France for most of a month. EF Pro Cycling Head Doctor Jon Greenwell has studied what works best for our athletes to get nine, ten, or more hours of quality sleep every night. He has drawn lessons that every athlete can apply to improve their own sleep routine.

These are his top eight sleep tips to get better nights of rest.

We know that you sleep better when it's cooler. Various studies show that the optimal sleep temperature is between 16 and 18 degrees centigrade. In the old days, we used to turn the air conditioning on, but air conditioning is not the best, because it increases the risk of respiratory infection. It dries your mouth out and can delay your recovery. The Eight Sleep Pods that we bring with us on Tour are super good, because you can just turn the temperature on your bed down instead of using air conditioning. And what is really good about Eight Sleep is that you can adjust the temperature over the course of the night. We know that your body temperature is cyclical and you want it to be cooler when you are falling asleep and then before you wake up, you want it to warm up a little bit. That is one of the ways that you can naturally help the waking up process, and Eight Sleep’s AI-powered Autopilot does that automatically for each user.

Having your phone in your bedroom is bad for a few reasons. There is some science that suggests that the light that phones emit compromises sleep. That is debated at the moment. But for me, just the fact that you're looking at your phone and getting that stimulation means that your brain is not able to wind down quietly. Studies show that even sleeping with a phone in your room and having it turned on are enough to keep you a little bit more awake, because its buzzing or ringing may bring you back out of a light sleep phase. Turn off your phone or store it in another space.

Sleep is controlled by hormones, predominantly melatonin, but also dopamine and serotonin. All of those work on a cyclical pattern. If you have a similar bedtime, whether it be nine o'clock or 10 o'clock, and then a good waking up time, which is similar morning after morning, your body will get into a habit. It starts to secrete those hormones in a daily rhythm that helps you maintain good sleep patterns.

Even on a rest day, we will take the team out for a ride at 11 o'clock just to stick to having breakfast at 8:00 or 8:30. If they want more sleep, our riders can nap in the afternoon.

Try to keep to a regular bed time and get up at about the same hour every morning.

If you eat just before you go to bed and your stomach is full, then the blood flow to your stomach will increase, which will increase your core body temperature and that will delay you going to sleep.

Essentially, you want to eat and let your body digest the food to avoid a big spike just before you go to bed. There is some evidence that having a good, protein rich meal a few hours before bedtime helps with sleep as well, because you don't want to get to a stage where your stomach's empty during the night. That may wake you up just because you're hungry. Try to time mealtimes and bedtimes so you are not going to bed hungry or full.

There is loads of really good data that show that doing between five and 10 minutes of breathing exercises lowers your vagal tone, which controls your parasympathetic nervous system. Breathing exercises decrease sympathetic stimulation and increase parasympathetic stimulation. That should help with sleep.

There are various different exercises that you can do to try and relax before you go to bed, rather than just sitting there being on your phone or doing something else that would wake you up.

This one is difficult for cyclists, especially if you are racing in the afternoon and want to drink an extra coffee. But generally, try to avoid consuming any caffeine after three or four o'clock in the afternoon, because we know that caffeine will affect the quality of your sleep.

Eight Sleep is really, really handy for this, because once you have your unit dialed in, you can basically ignore the temperature of your room. If your room is hot at night and you don’t have air conditioning, you can use an Eight Sleep to control the temperature of your bed.

The other thing you want to do is have good air quality. You don't want the humidity to be too high. Just opening the window is useful because it releases built up carbon dioxide.

We have started using air purifiers with the team this year to try and improve the sleep environment. You also want to try and limit external noise. Some people will use ear plugs if it's particularly noisy. Some people like really, really dark environments.

Try to block out lights or other sources of stimulation and use a familiar, comfortable pillow. You want your sleep environment to be as normal and as comfortable as possible.

Our riders will try and get between nine or 10 hours sleep at night. We know that that helps with recovery, so that's what we aim to get. That's what our daily timetable works towards. If you start getting less sleep, it can decrease your immune system, and decrease your ability to recover. If you have a few poor nights of sleep in a row, there is definitely more of a risk that you will get sick.

The Eight Sleep app tracks quality sleep time, which is a great metric. If you find that you are sleeping poorly, try to find out why.

Should you change your mealtime? Look at the environment in your room. Is your Eight Sleep too cold? Is it too warm? Is the room noisy? Look at all of the other environmental factors as well. Even something like having a TV in your hotel room with an on-off switch that's glowing at night or a gap around the edge of the curtains could disturb your sleep.

Over time you will notice patterns that will help you sleep better at night.