{"id":3767,"date":"2026-06-12T15:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/here-are-8-ways-to-upgrade-your-sleep-routine-from-a-performance-coach-who-works-with-top-athletes-and-business-leaders\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T15:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T14:07:00","slug":"here-are-8-ways-to-upgrade-your-sleep-routine-from-a-performance-coach-who-works-with-top-athletes-and-business-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/12\/here-are-8-ways-to-upgrade-your-sleep-routine-from-a-performance-coach-who-works-with-top-athletes-and-business-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Here are 8 ways to upgrade your sleep routine, from a performance coach who works with top athletes and business leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/lifestyle\/article\/best-sleep-essentials\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">Sleepmaxxing<\/a> is par for the course in elite circles these days. High performers in business and in sport <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/article\/8-actually-good-ways-to-track-sleep-ranked\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">arm themselves<\/a> with Whoop bands, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/article\/30-days-of-cbt-i-to-cure-my-insomnia-heres-what-happened\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">CBT-I<\/a> therapists and five-figure <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/article\/best-mattress\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"text link\">mattresses<\/a> to get better sleep. The old stereotype of the high-flyer surviving on four hours has long been dead; a <a target=\"_blank\" data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2018\/02\/senior-executives-get-more-sleep-than-everyone-else\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/hbr.org\/2018\/02\/senior-executives-get-more-sleep-than-everyone-else&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2018\/02\/senior-executives-get-more-sleep-than-everyone-else\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> by <em>Harvard Business Review<\/em>, analysing the sleep schedules of thousands of leaders, found that senior executives are actually getting <em>more<\/em> shut-eye than their weary subordinates. Only 1-3% per cent of the population carries the famous <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/articles\/PMC12450728\/\" class=\"text link\">DEC2 gene<\/a>, which can allow you to function normally on four to six hours of sleep. For the rest of us, the data is loud and clear: poor sleep is bad for your memory, recovery, executive function and cognition \u2013 everything you need to operate at your highest level.<\/p>\n<p>So what can we learn about sleep from well-rested VIPs? Whether it\u2019s long hours or high-stakes, adrenaline-inducing competitions, getting a full eight hours can be particularly difficult for this cohort. We asked <a target=\"_blank\" data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.samneame.com\/\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.samneame.com\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.samneame.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Neame<\/a>, a performance coach who works with everyone from Olympic athletes to CMOs, for his best tips for sleep-challenged clients.<\/p>\n<p>1. If you want great sleep when you travel, bring your own pillow<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Travelling with your own pillow is something I advise to most people that I work with, because you&#8217;re going to a completely new environment where you need to sleep before the Olympics or a competition. Having a pillow also has your scent from home, which is familiar \u2013 one of the reasons people don&#8217;t sleep well in a new hotel is because it&#8217;s a new space. So the first two nights you&#8217;re going to be on guard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>2. Wake up at the same time every single day, even when you had a late night<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost people don&#8217;t sleep very well Sunday night \u2013 not because they&#8217;re nervous, but because they had a lie-in on Saturday. They caught up on their sleep and now they don&#8217;t need to go to bed at 8pm. So they bugger themself. That&#8217;s why Mondays and Tuesdays are quite unproductive for a lot of people and mentally tough. Do I ask people to wake up at 6am on weekends? No, because they won&#8217;t. But I do say just don&#8217;t wake up late. Ggo to bed earlier the night before, and wake up at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>3. Wearables aren\u2019t always your friend<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I make some athletes remove their Whoop a week before the Olympics or a big competition because of sleep anxiety. When you wake up and look at your sleep score and say, &#8216;Oh shit, it&#8217;s red,\u2019 you&#8217;re going to have a bad day. The mind controls so much output. We weren&#8217;t developed to have wearables. The built-in wearable is our awareness of our body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>4. Evening screen time is sleep\u2019s greatest enemy<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCortisol from phones is unbelievable. The brain is terrified when we&#8217;re flicking through short-form content. I remember doing a trial with three clients that I work with. I said, \u2018Let&#8217;s all do this together as a team. For one week, we&#8217;re not going to go on our phones past 8pm. We&#8217;re also going to read 10 pages of a book at night.\u2019 Their sleep improved tenfold, their stress came down by at least 50%, according to their Whoops, and their recovery increased by around 30%.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>5. A work-out will help you sleep\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOlympic athletes sleep because they are so exhausted from physical and mental fatigue, but CEOs, they&#8217;re never physically exhausted. We&#8217;re built to move. I have to implement certain exercises for corporates to do in their office now. I had one CMO, and every 55 minutes, she&#8217;d stand up for five minutes and do air squats and move her body just to get everything going. She felt unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>6. \u2026unless it\u2019s late at night<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe evening is a time for cortisol to be as low as possible. When it comes to lifting heavy weights in the evening, don&#8217;t do it. You&#8217;re not going to sleep well. Obviously, most people are in office jobs, and they say, \u2018Well, shit, I haven&#8217;t trained today. I better go and do a quick workout.\u2019 You do deadlifts and chest and all these big heavy compound exercises \u2013 you&#8217;re spiking your cortisol, you&#8217;re going to offset your sleep because you&#8217;re going to have a later onset of deeper sleep, so you&#8217;re not going to feel recovered.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/article\/how-to-sleep-like-an-olympian\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sleepmaxxing is par for the course in elite circles these days. High performers in business and in sport arm themselves with Whoop bands, CBT-I therapists and five-figure mattresses to get better sleep. The old stereotype of the high-flyer surviving on four hours has long been dead; a study by Harvard Business Review, analysing the sleep [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.gq-magazine.co.uk\/photos\/6a2c1072265c43b5e3bd5bf4\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/013-Sleep-Hp-RD.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[5657,2514,4857,6617,137,6616,6615,1504,4891,968,1839,691],"class_list":["post-3767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-athletes","tag-business","tag-coach","tag-leaders","tag-performance","tag-routine","tag-sleep","tag-top","tag-upgrade","tag-ways","tag-wellness","tag-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehotedit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}