Sleeping your way to the top

Similar traits can be found within the 'make-up' of the majority of those we would popularly term 'top performers'. It is common to see aspects in their life that indirectly assist in helping them achieve the marginal gains that work to separate them from the pack. These can range from complimentary hobbies to strategic relationships, and can be interdependent. However, what is a requirement of all, be it for Olympian or business titan, is achieving quality sleep.

It is a fact that allowing your heart to rest and cells to repair promotes health and wellbeing, without which your cardiovascular health would suffer almost immediately. When you are asleep your body also produces cytokines to help the immune system fight infections and assist in all forms of recovery. These restorative effects improve your mood, decrease the risk of developing physical and/ or mental health illness and are the key to your resilience.

Sleep also helps you retain and consolidate the memories that are made during the process of learning. Without sleep the neural pathways that allow recall cannot be effectively formed and this means that if you are in a job that requires high cognitive function and/ or are faced with rapidly changing circumstances then your performance will be dramatically hindered.

One study found that competitive tennis players who increased their sleep to nine hours a night saw serve accuracy gains between 36% and 42%, whilst another group who suffered mild sleep deprivation saw accuracy fall by 53% when compared to normal performance.

It would be a mistake to think that too little sleep is the only hazard, the opposite is also true. The Journal of the American Heart Association recently published a meta-analysis of more than three million people and found those who slept over nine hours a day died earlier, with those sleeping 11 hours increasing their odds for an early demise by over 50%.

In general, most adults need between six to nine hours, with those in sports ranging between seven and nine hours. Elite athletes are now encouraged to aim for nine hours and treat rest as they would diet...as an essential. This then leads the conversation back to how much sleep is required by an 'office athlete' who is very cognitively active. On this, opinions vary, but I would warn that if you are sleeping less than six hours then you could be heading for issues.

To conclude, if you are looking for 'marginal gains' in your own performance then looking at your sleep pattern could be a good start. Finally, for those of you who clicked on this article because you read the title and thought it might be a little more racy then my apologies...I am a purebred risk management specialist, and that's a very long way from Mills & Boon!