Getting a good night sleep may be the missing key to your performance on the field.
For most of my career, I have been able to get a good amount of sleep on a regular basis. Once I learned more about the benefits of getting good sleep, I did some experimenting to find out the amount of sleep I needed to perform the best on the field. I needed about 7-8 hours per night. Any less than that and I felt like a walking zombie. Any more than that and I woke up feeling groggy and very lethargic throughout the day. That surprised me because I figured that I was “well rested” from getting more sleep.
There were a many times in high school where I felt sleep deprived consistently. In high school, I woke up around 6 a.m. for my 45-minute commute through traffic and I would get home from baseball practice around 7 p.m. or even later on game days. Being a high schooler, I procrastinated on homework or projects and wasted a lot of time watching television late into the night so I went to bed around 12-1 a.m. Getting 5-6 hours of sleep, at most, was not enough and I was very tired by lunchtime. By the time the afternoon came, I was going through the motions during practices and scraping by at the games. Luckily, my talent was enough to make me a good high school player. Given more sleep, I believe I would have been a much better player.
College was not much better for me. It was actually worse in my freshman year. It was the first time living on my own, like most college students, so I was enjoying the freedom that I had. I decided to stay up late almost every night and wake up for our 6 a.m. lifts during the fall semester. On the days we did not lift, I had morning classes that started as early as 8 a.m. I believe I averaged around 4-5 hours per night that entire school year. At one of our first team gatherings, I remember sneaking off to find some floor space to lie down and get a short nap in. Many of my old teammates bring that moment up to me to this day. I basically slept everywhere. Somehow, I was able to perform well and was named a Freshman All-American by Louisville Slugger. Again, I believe that if I had gotten more sleep, my performance would have been much better instead of relying only on my talent to get me by.
In my later years in college and in professional baseball, I became much more invested in finding ways to maximizing my performance on the field. I was very conscious of my sleep patterns. This is where I started experimenting and figuring out how much sleep I needed to perform at my best. I played to the best of my abilities and did well even though the competition got better and I truly believe that getting optimal levels of sleep played an important role.
Here are some of the sleeping tips I have found to be useful:
- Find your optimal range of sleep needed to perform your best.
- For me, it is about 7-8 hours. The more active you are, the more sleep you will probably need. The days I lift are the days I sleep closer to 8 hours.
- Get black out curtains and earplugs
- Keeping distractions such as light and sound low will ensure a much better sleep. Many of you have probably experienced waking up in the middle of the night by something and it could be tough to fall back asleep sometimes. Warning: earplugs take some time to get used to, but it can make all the difference.
- Have a good nightly routine
- I have found that taking a shower and reflecting on my day are essential for me to get a good sleep. Play with a few different things that you think will ease you into a good sleep.
- Keep a sleeping schedule
- It is important to get in the habit of sleeping around the same time every night and waking up around the same time every morning. If you program your body to do so, it makes getting a good night rest much easier.
