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Good sleep hygiene is a crucial competent of any top-level athlete’s approach to fitness and wellbeing.

Poor quality sleep can have a negative physical and mental impact, hindering an athlete’s performance. But manage sleep well, and they can maximise their ability.

According to the NHS, adults require between seven and nine hours of sleep per night.

Given the changeable schedules athletes in elite sports are subject to, sticking to a strict sleep routine can be very difficult.

That means maintaining as much consistency as possible, even when on the road, can have a huge benefit.

Remi Mobed, a physiotherapist with an expertise in sleep who has worked with the England men’s national teams in football and rugby, supports the Ineos Grenadiers cycling team.

He says their approach is the “gold standard” for managing sleep in elite-level sport.

“In a group stage of a Tour de France, the cyclists are going to be in approximately 20 different hotels over the course of 22 days”, he says.

“Each of those cyclists has their own dehumidifier, their own mattress, their own duvet and their own pillow that come as a travel pack. The team travels with that and the soigneur goes ahead and prepares the athlete’s room for them prior to arrival, every day for 22 days.

Doubles tennis player Neal Skupski – a three-time Wimbledon champion – travels all over the world on the ATP Tour. For him, the constant change of location is part of the challenge.

” You’re sleeping in a different bed each week – some mattresses hard, some soft, “the 35-year-old says.

” For a lot of the guys]the problem] is the pillows – they can mess you up. You can wake up with a bad neck and then you can’t turn, and that hurts you especially on the serve.

Competing worldwide requires athletes to traverse time zones and adjust their sleep schedules accordingly. So far in 2025, Skupski has played in Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE, and the US.

“People see players at tournaments on TV and sometimes think that they should be playing better, but it is probably down to the fact that their body is just knackered”, the Liverpudlian says.

” For the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Andy Murray was trying to get on time zone back in the UK a week in advance. So he was getting up around 2am and then starting his day, which I found crazy. But then he had a much better sleep when he got to Tokyo than me, so maybe I should have listened to him. “

Mobed adds:” As a general rule, if you’re jumping three time zones, your body is able to cope with it. On top of that, it takes an athlete one day per hour that they’ve travelled to adjust.

In team sports, athletes often share hotel rooms with a team-mate while travelling to away matches or international competitions.

“Coaches overlook sleep as a major factor”, Mobed says. “They often partner the strikers together, for instance, or the fly-halves, because the coaches want them to be discussing tactics. It is a mentorship system, thinking, ‘ this young kid can learn from Harry Kane through small conversations in the hotel room’.

” But the hotel room is not somewhere that should be done. That should be a place that is sacrosanct for the athletes to be in a relaxed state.

According to NHS data, more than a million people in the UK were prescribed medication to help with sleep in 2023. Addiction to sleeping pills can lead to withdrawal symptoms including anxiety, panic attacks, sweating, headaches and shaking.

Brentford captain Christian Norgaard revealed he feared becoming addicted to sleeping pills during his time with Brondby in his native Denmark, saying a sleep coach helped him avoid developing a serious problem.

” I think there is a time and a place for them, but the basics of sleep hygiene must be addressed first. Athletes often won’t prioritise sleep, because they know that they can go to the doctor and get a sleeping pill.

Not everybody needs to be as precise about their sleep hygiene as an elite athlete, but getting good-quality sleep is important for the health and wellbeing of everyone.

“Naps should be no more than 40 minutes long, ideally 20”, Mobed offers as a key tip. “Some people will nap for one hour, two hours, three hours during the day, and that will have a massive detrimental effect.

” You’ve got this napping vicious cycle – sleeping too much in the day can actually completely put out your rhythm, and then at night you’re not going to sleep well. You’re then being counter-productive because the drowsiness goes into the next day. “

For Skupski, one crucial change has made a big difference.

” I was waking up in the middle of the night and thinking, ‘ why am I wide awake? ‘, “he says.

Men’s Six Nations: Wales v England

Venue: Principality Stadium, Cardiff Date: Saturday, 15 March Kick-off: 16: 45 GMT

Two decades have passed since his kick to beat England paved the way to a first Welsh Grand Slam in 27 years.

His first answer in a post-match TV interview summed up his role in one of the most defining moments in Welsh sporting history:

“It was written for me wasn’t it”?

The 72, 000 supporters in the stadium and the millions at home could also sense the greater significance of his match-winning penalty. As the ball sailed between the posts, former England prop Brian Moore on commentary remarked: “Do not underestimate the enormity of that kick”.

A mile or so away from the Principality Stadium, in a local pub, another Welsh icon Charlotte Church, was glued to the TV. She decided to hunt down the man in the silver boots.

“I was in here watching the game, and I didn’t know Gav before that. And then I was like, I’m gonna go out and find him in town”, said the singer.

Church was speaking on her podcast Kicking Back with the Cardiffians where she also described the pressures of life in the spotlight. This was the life Henson stepped into when they eventually met, forging Wales ‘ version of Posh and Becks – former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham and England captain David Beckham.

Henson went from a well-known rugby player to a front-page UK celebrity.

The mid-noughties was the era of reality TV, where the tabloids and glossy magazines like Heat and Hello were king and queen makers. Henson would go on to star in a variety of shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and The Bachelor.

Henson remains as enigmatic as ever, making him the perfect subject for a series to coincide with the 20-year anniversary of that kick, and so Golden Boy: Finding Gavin Henson was conceived.

The purpose of the podcast was to track him down and speak to him. The finding part was the easy bit. He owns a pub in the Vale of Glamorgan, where he lives a quiet life pulling pints and washing pans. Convincing Henson to revisit his own story was the challenge.

Numerous colleagues had attempted and failed to get his involvement in a documentary series. He would often agree tentatively to the initial idea before eventually pulling out, or in some cases fail to reply to any further messages.

Henson would eventually retire in 2019. The final decade of his career would see him bounce along from club to club, embroiled in numerous controversies. It was often easy at that time to forget the huge impact he had as a player in the mid to late noughties.

Henson was instrumental in the Grand Slam successes of 2005 and 2008. His partnership with Tom Shanklin was the cornerstone of the team’s attacking and defensive system.

“I would just be in awe of what he could do, whether it be upending someone in a tackle, whether it be smashing a conversion or a penalty, whether it be his vision, putting someone into a hole”, said Shanklin.

“When he was on form and he wanted to play there was no one better”.

Six months after his heroics against England, at 23 years of age, Henson decided to publish an autobiography which would tear the national team apart.

In the book he openly criticised several of his team-mates and the saga would eventually lead to the resignation of head coach Mike Ruddock.

Henson was an outlier, a man who split the opinions of team-mates, coaches and supporters. He was his own man who would strike his own hits.

Which brings us back to the kick. There is less than five minutes left on the clock, England lead 9-8 when a penalty is awarded to Wales. Stephen Jones had taken the previous kicks that day, but he stepped away.

“When you have someone with an amazing talent who can kick a ball a long, long way, and you have a secret weapon and someone who has the ability to smash a ball 50 metres, you think, well, we’ve got to use this guy”, said Jones.

Jones understood that a kick of around that distance at an angle was beyond his and most people’s range.

“There’s not many people now in world rugby who can take on kicks of that distance comfortably”, he said.

Wales fly-half Rhys Patchell is a self-confessed kicking nerd. Even he concedes that he very rarely practised from that position on the pitch.

“It is almost Hollywoodesque in terms of the script is written and you just step up and you do it. I think it’s the sort of effortlessness”, Patchell told the podcast.

Effortlessness is an appropriate term to describe Henson’s playing career. He seemed blessed with abilities that others simply did not possess. He could do what others could not and he did it with ease.

It is this unique sporting ability that was the ultimate driver in my effort to speak to him. It is fair to say that the journey has been challenging. Henson remains as unpredictable as ever, occasionally resurfacing before returning to the shadows.

It is that elusiveness that fascinates me and so many others.