How do athletes manage sleep, and how can you improve yours?

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.