The Best Legal Performance Enhancer

In our last post we talked about pulling the longest levers first. In short, put your time and effort into mastering the things that give you the highest return on investment before worrying about the minutia. Now that we know we need to focus on the big things first, it leaves us with two questions.

1. What are the longest levers?

2. How can I best pull them?

Today we will be tackling what is arguably the longest lever and how to put yourself in the best position to utilize it.

The longest lever is sleep. Too little sleep can cause endocrine homeostasis, the healthy balance of hormones, to be disrupted. Amongst the many hormones that are affected by poor sleep are cortisol and anabolic hormones. When cortisol is secreted in the proper amounts at the right time it can be incredibly beneficial, but, with poor sleep clearance and regulation of cortisol is disrupted leading to poor recovery and later performance. Anabolic hormones such as growth hormone, testosterone, estrogen, and DHEA are also pushed out of their optimal levels with poor sleep. Lastly, on a cellular level, poor sleep leads to pro-apoptic gene expression and increases pro-inflammation signaling. Apoptosis is the process by which cells conduct a programmed cell death. This happens constantly in healthy organisms. However, when sleep deprived, the genes that lead to apoptosis are "activated" more than normal leading to increased apoptosis. Some studies even show possible loss of brain cells due to lack of sleep. While lack of sleep can be detrimental, just reaching a minimal level of sleep is not where the gains top out. In a study on the Stanford basketball team, roughly 110 mins of extra sleep a night over the course of 5-7 weeks took 0.7 seconds off of their shuttle times, added roughly 9% to both their free throw and field goal accuracy, both with very low P values demonstrating a very low probability of these results being due to chance. Not only does a lack of sleep lead to worse performance and overall health, and increase in sleep actually helps improve your performance. Many athletes want their goals so badly that they train non-stop, instead, placing that focus on getting more sleep would actually help them not only improve their health but allow them to train harder more consistently. 

So how do we effectively pull this lever?

Setting yourself up for success when it comes to sleep is called having good sleep hygiene. We can get in the weeds but for the most bang for your buck try and follow these three rules: 

1. The 3-2-1 rule: 

   1. 3 hours before bed no food 

   2. 2 hours before bed no water 

   3. 1 hour before bed no screens

Digestion can worsen sleep quality by increasing your core body temperature, which needs to drop in order to get good quality sleep, and, amongst various other mechanisms, increase insulin leading to disruption of melatonin and HGH release both making it harder to fall asleep and making your sleep less effective for recovery. Drinking too close to bed can cause you to wake often in the middle of the night disrupting sleep cycles. Lastly, blue light alters your circadian rhythm tricking the brain into thinking its still light out and increases alertness at a time where you should be relaxing. Additionally it suppresses melatonin. Your retinas detect the incoming blue light and send a signal to the suprachiasmatic nucleus(SCN) in the hypothalamus. The SCN acts as a sort of biological clock, when sent signals that it is still light out it suppresses or delays signals to the pineal gland which is in charge of melatonin release. 

2. Consistent schedule 

   1. Your circadian rhythm can be thought of as the 24 hour rhythm your body follows. This rhythm affects what hormones are secreted when, alertness vs relaxation, digestion, and body temperature amongst many other factors. The more consistent your sleep and wake times are, the more accurate your circadian rhythm can be, allowing it to start and stop these processes at the right times and intensities. 

3. Bed is for sleeping

   1. If you want to be able to fall asleep faster than you should be training your brain to associate your bed with sleep. By spending time in bed scrolling or tossing and turning, you are making associations with your bed that are not conducive to falling asleep quickly.

Sleep is one of the most effective legal performance enhancers out there. Bottom line, sleep more, perform better. 

Once you are pulling the longest levers consistently, taking care of the big things first and well, then that is when the shorter levers can give you the edge. At the highest levels of sport, everyone is a master of the long levers so the shorter ones are where the edge is found. But, until you are at that level of locked in, no amount of short levers will make up for the long one. 

References

Cunha, L. A., Costa, J. A., Marques, E. A., Brito, J., Lastella, M., & Figueiredo, P. (2023). The impact of sleep interventions on athletic performance: A systematic review. Sports Medicine - Open, 9, Article 58. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-023-00599-z

Huang, K., & Ihm, J. (2021). Sleep and injury risk. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 20(6), 286–290. https://doi.org/10.1249/JSR.0000000000000849

Kaczmarek, F., Bartkowiak-Wieczorek, J., Matecka, M., Jenczylik, K., Brzezińska, K., Gajniak, P., Marchwiak, S., Kaczmarek, K., Nowak, M., … Mądry, E. (2025). Sleep and athletic performance: A multidimensional review of physiological and molecular mechanisms. Journal of Clinical Medicine, 14(21), 7606. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm14217606

Mah, C. D., Mah, K. E., Kezirian, E. J., & Dement, W. C. (2011). The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players. Sleep, 34(7), 943–950. https://doi.org/10.5665/SLEEP.1132