Sleep Strategies to Enhance Recovery for Hockey Players

Sleep is one of the greatest performance enhancers for athletes and is vital to both their health and performance. Two major characteristics that affect sleep are quality and duration. Sleep quality is defined as falling asleep within 30 minutes or less, sleeping through the night with no more than one awakening, and falling back to sleep within 20 minutes if you wake up. 

The average recommended duration of sleep for people age 18-25 is 6 hours but athletes need much more.

Athletes need at least 8 hours but should strive for 10 hours or more to fully recover and restore energy levels. The stresses of life, technology, and what we eat can affect a players' sleep in different ways. Sleep affects a myriad of functions for players from their athletic performance and readiness, their cognitive function, as well as immunity and inflammatory response. As practitioners, we try to control as many factors as possible to enhance their sleep thus improving recovery.

Practice days, non-game days, and game days all pose a unique set of challenges that must be accounted for (in addition to diet, travel, and factors at home, i.e. having a new baby). 

Ultimately, we are trying to set and manipulate a player's biological time clock, called circadian rhythm to help their body to signal when they should be waking up or preparing for sleep. Controlling the timing and usage of the following factors can aid in manipulating a player's circadian rhythm and improve sleep:

1. Light Exposure- the timing and use of natural sunlight

2. Caffeine Usage-when are the right and wrong times to ingest it

3. Sleep Routine- the routine around when sleep occurs

4. Environment- how their bedroom/hotel room affects sleep quality and duration

5. Eliminating Blue Light- artificial light stimulation and hormone secretion

6. Food Consumption- nutritional timing can affect the quality of sleep

Light Exposure

Natural sunlight has numerous benefits to the human body. It is vital for regulating your circadian rhythm or biological time clock. The body's sleep and wake cycles are manipulated by three hormones: Cortisol, Melatonin, and Serotonin.

Cortisol is a stress hormone that causes the heart rate to rise, breathing rate to increase, and blood sugar to spike. All lead to wakefulness and the delayed onset of sleep and disruption of other hormones influencing sleep. When the body is under stress prior to sleep, the duration and quality of sleep that follows are affected.

Melatonin signals your body to go to sleep. Serotonin, on the other hand, cues the body to do the opposite, wake up. The timing of sunlight signals the body to decrease Melatonin and increase Serotonin causing you to wake up. Depending on the day whether practice day, game day, or travel day, the timing of sunlight exposure must be accounted for.

Getting outside in the morning and being in sunlight, cloudy or not, helps set a person's circadian rhythm by waking the body up. This natural light in the morning sets the athlete up for better sleep at night. Simple things like going to the rink in the morning while not wearing sunglasses is encouraged to get extra sunlight.

On game days if players nap, it is important for them to walk outside to cue their bodies to wake up. There are times when the athlete needs to refrain from as much light as possible to promote sleep. As the day goes on, you want to stimulate sleep and decrease wakefulness. Limiting any extra light is imperative. The world we live in today is centered around technology and the associated artificial light negatively affects our ability to sleep more and improved quality.

To promote sleep, you need to limit sunlight and blue light exposure. Players should wear sunglasses any time after 4:00 pm to block sunlight. Also, in the evenings dimming lights in the home and use of blinds to block sunlight are good remedies. The removal of natural light and blue light should begin at least 1 hour prior to bedtime. 

Caffeine Usage

Caffeine usage is a performance enhancer but also the amount and timing of ingesting it must be considered. Caffeine can remain in your system for 3-5 hours after ingestion, but the effects do vary from player to player. Two commonly sold caffeinated drinks are Bang Energy, which has 300 mg of caffeine and Red Bull (12 oz) which has 111 mg of caffeine.

It's not that uncommon seeing a player have 2 caffeinated drinks during the day. Whether the player's caffeine kick affects his sleep and recovery negatively or not depends on the timing. We want caffeine usage to be in the morning to awaken the body and set their internal clock to be awake. This is consistent for both game and non-game days. On game days there are more variables that we must account for regarding the usage of caffeine-containing substances.

Players might choose to have a high caffeinated drink like coffee, pre-workout, or an energy drink throughout their pregame routine. These substances should only be used before the game because if used during or post-game, especially night games, they risk affecting their ability to fall asleep and thus their ability to recover optimally. Having a high-quality sleep post-game is vital for the recovery of the player. The ingestion of caffeine can cause sleep latency and fragmented sleep stages thus decreasing overall quality.

Sleep Routine

Having a consistent routine for sleep is very important but is especially hard in professional hockey since there are 3-4 games per week at night that interrupt players' normal bedtimes that they would incur on non-game days.  Compounding this is traveling to another city post-game which may land a player in bed at 3-4 am, especially if traveling east across time zones. Even for a high school or college player balancing schoolwork, practices, and late-night games that could start as late as 9 pm due to ice availability will push back the time a player can fall asleep. Bedtime is important, but it is also critical to wake up at the same time every day especially on non-game days to reinforce your body's circadian rhythm.

A player's routine around sleep is also important. Game days make this schedule much more difficult, particularly going to bed at the same time. Players might not get back in their bed until 3-4 in the morning some nights. That is why we have strategies in place, like limiting caffeine usage, providing sleep supplements, and making sure their bedrooms are sleep ready, to name a few, to make sure they are ready to fall asleep and get as much quality rest as possible.

Sleep Environment

It should be stressed to players that their bedroom should be a dark, cold, comfortable room, like a cave. The same goes for their hotel room on the road. This is all part of their routine that sets them up for success when it comes to sleep and ultimately recovery. The bedroom should be set between 63-66 Fahrenheit (17-19 Celsius).

Having the room too hot elevates your core body temperature causing the onset of sleep to be delayed. We want our players to associate sleep with their bedroom so limiting electronic use is key. One tip we use to assure the association of sleep with the bedroom is if a player is having trouble falling asleep after about 20-30 minutes, leave the room and read a book in another room until sleepiness occurs and then return to the bedroom. 

Eliminating Blue Light

Technology will always be around but our addiction to our phones and smart devices we cannot deny is an issue. It needs to be communicated to players that there are times when using these devices will negatively affect their ability to fall asleep. One of the biggest issues with technology is the blue light that is emitted from them.

Blue light interferes with the balance of the hormones regulating sleep. As mentioned previously, Cortisol causes a stress response in our body resulting in wakefulness, Serotonin tells our bodies to wake-up, and Melatonin promotes sleepiness. When these hormones are out of balance, they confuse our brains because it is hard to know whether it is day or night. When our eyes absorb blue light, it decreases melatonin production, thus delaying sleep. There are strategies we can employ that eliminate and/or decrease exposure to blue light-emitting devices. At night wearing blue light blocking glasses when watching tv or on any type of screen helps promote Melatonin production.

Another strategy is setting an electronic deadline an hour before bed. Especially younger athletes need to refrain from lying in bed playing video games or surfing on their phones, these practices flood their bodies with blue light. As discussed earlier, game and non-game days provide different challenges to players.

Having players eliminate phone use post-game (best a possible) along with dimming lights in their cars and at home, help prepare their bodies for sleep. Especially after all the bright lights and stimulation from the arena during the game. Another simple strategy for phones is setting up a schedule to have the screen shift to “night mode” so the colors are less blue and redder to cue sleepiness.

Food Consumption

Sleep quality and onset is affected by the timing of food consumption as well. Having food before bed causes your body to shift its focus to digesting the food which also increases internal core body temperature, which discussed above, slows the onset of sleep. Not only when we eat affects sleep but what we eat can as well. Younger athletes might have a bowl of ice cream before going to bed, this will spike their blood sugar causing them to be alert. Starches and sugary carbohydrates raise insulin levels and hinder the release of other hormones that affect the quality of sleep. Growth hormone is also impaired which is needed to help recovery from the day's game/practice. Alcohol should be avoided. Alcohol breaks up sleep stages and causes sleep to be fragmented decreasing the restfulness of sleep thus recovery.

So many daily activities can affect the sleep quality and duration in the players we work with. From professional to high school players the same challenges surrounding sleep exist like mistimed light exposure, caffeine misuse, irregular bedtimes, a poorly maintained bedroom, too much blue light at the wrong time, and badly timed food consumption. As long as we are aware of the negative things that affect the quality and duration of sleep in the players we work with, we can provide proven strategies to improve their sleep and thus their recovery, making them better hockey players.

Mike Wagner, M.S., C.S.C.S. Strength and Conditioning Coach Hershey Bears

You can find Mike on Twitter (@CoachMikeWagner) and LinkedIn.