EF Pro Cycling Head Doctor Jon Greenwell makes sure our athletes know just how important it is for them to get good nights of rest when they are training and racing. Along with eating well, sleep is the factor that will determine how well they are able to recover from the strain that they put their bodies through on a daily basis. If they get too little sleep, they will soon experience drastic drop offs in their performance on their bikes.

“Over time, doctors have looked at different things that affect recovery, and, while there are lots of trendy new recovery aids, ultimately it comes down to sleep and fueling properly,” Dr. Greenwell explains. “There are a lot of studies that show you can have one or two nights of bad sleep without really affecting performance, but if your sleep is consistently poor, then you're more likely to get sick, you’re not going to respond to training as well, and your performance just isn't going to be as good. If you're used to having eight hours of sleep and you're only able to get six per night over the course of a week during a grand tour, you’re going to see between five and 10 percent loss in your performance. So, we look for lots of things that we can do from a recovery point of view within the team to try and make our riders sleep better.”

Eight Sleep is one of the most effective tools that our racers use to get better nights of sleep. The Pod 4 allows them to control the temperature of their beds and monitor metrics such as their heart rate and breathing rate when they are sleeping. Each of our racers has an Eight Sleep at home. Our team also brings the units to grand tours. Keeping cool is one of the most important things our riders can do to improve their sleep quality.

“We know that you sleep better if you're in a cooler environment,” Dr. Greenwell explains. “Heat is one of the impediments to sleep. If the weather gets hot outside and there’s no air conditioning, so the bedroom's hot, we know it's more difficult to sleep. What we're trying to do with Eight Sleep is essentially control that. Eight Sleep enables you to cool down the bed environment. The way that Eight Sleep works is it pumps cool water into a little membrane that sits above the mattress, which enables you to keep your body cool. That means you don't need to have the air conditioning on, which is a real advantage.”

The problem with air conditioning is that it makes you more susceptible to illness. The constant flow of air from A.C. units tends to dry out the immunoglobulins in your nose and mouth, which require moisture to fight the onset of coughs, colds, sore throats, flu, and even COVID. In hotels, air conditioners can also be noisy and there is never any guarantee that their filters have been cleaned on a regular basis.

That is why our team brings Eight Sleep Pods to races. Staff members travel from race hotel to race hotel, setting up the mattresses so our riders always have cool beds to sleep and chill. Dr. Greenwell’s performance team monitors data from the Pod’s sensors to assess how well our riders are recovering. The most important metrics are total sleep volume, resting heart rate and breathing rate. If a rider’s resting heart rate or breathing rate are elevated it may indicate that they are on the brink of falling sick. Maintaining adequate sleep volume ensures that our riders are giving themselves every chance to recover at their best.

“There's a mental component and then there's the physical component,” Dr. Greenwell says. “Good quality sleep helps athletes mentally. If you're sleeping poorly, we know you're more likely to get stress and anxiety, which aren't good for an athlete. And then, from a physiological performance point of view, it helps your body to restore your glycogen levels, which helps you train better the next day. It gives your muscles time to recover and it allows your body to remove toxins and all the byproducts of training that you've built up. Sleep helps you reset your body so that when you go again the next day, it's ready to perform.”

Other things that Dr. Greenwell recommends to our riders to improve their sleep include limiting caffeine intake in the afternoons and evenings and reducing screen time before bed, making sure that rooms are dark and quiet, with no disturbing lights from televisions or electronic clocks, and bringing their own pillows. It is also important to maintain regular bedtimes and avoid eating heavy meals late at night.

“We want to maintain the time that our riders go to bed on a fairly consistent basis,” Dr. Greenwell says. “That can be really difficult at a race, because you can't control what time the race finishes and you can't control how far away the hotel is from the race. You might finish the race and have to drive two, two and a half, three hours. We do that kind of thing day in, day out, day in, day out. So we try to look at the schedule and fix the meal time as compared to the bed time as well as we can. You don't want to be having a big carbohydrate heavy meal within about two hours of going to bed. So we'll try and make sure that we eat a couple of hours before we go to bed. And then sometimes we'll just give them a high protein snack before bed because that's been shown to help as well.”

Once our riders head up to their rooms, they know they will find an optimal sleep environment with their Eight Sleeps set up to keep their beds cool throughout the night. Morning after morning, they will wake up feeling stronger and sharper, ready to race hard and get the best out of themselves.

Get your Eight Sleep Pod 4 so you can too.