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How To Sleep Better And Recover Like Elite Soccer Players
Improving your sleep improves your life, try these
In order to continually perform at their best, elite soccer players use strategies to improve their sleep hygiene. We can apply some of these strategies to our own recovery from exercise, and generally to improve the quality of our sleep.
Our sleep quality generally declines as we age. We don’t have the late-night matches, the travelling, nor the intensity of the training of pro players. However chronic insomnia affects 57% of the elderly in the United States, with impairment of quality of life, function, and health.
In fact, some medical researchers call insomnia “a neglected epidemic”. It is one of the most common complaints in patients with mental health problems. Furthermore, a recent (2018) study found that older people who took more than 30 minutes to fully fall asleep had lower bone mineral density than those who fell asleep faster.
Improving our sleep quality not only makes our life more healthy and more enjoyable but very likely will mean that we live longer.
How (going to) sleep works
In order to apply the techniques of the elite athletes, let’s review how sleep works.
