<\/p>\n
The Seattle Seahawks are one of the NFL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great success stories in recent years. Their 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII not only won them a place in football history, it put a national spotlight on the benefits of performance-enhancing practices including yoga, mindfulness and sleep.<\/p>\n
Ever since, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wanted to learn more about how the Seahawks have made sleep a part of their culture. So I contacted the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head coach Pete Carroll, who told me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When it comes to the precision and science of sleep for optimal performance, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been fortunate to work with experts to help guide us on both the physical and mental strategies to enhance our recovery process.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And he connected me with Sam Ramsden and Michael Gervais, who lead the Seahawks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sports science team. Here are their answers to my questions.<\/p>\n
The professional sports community has become a pioneer in showcasing the importance of sleep. You have been an advocate of this for a long time \u00e2\u20ac\u201d when did you first start incorporating sleep training into your teams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 practices, and what inspired you to do so? \nWe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve tried to not make a big deal about sleep, because we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want athletes to hyper-focus on if they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t getting enough of it.<\/p>\n \nInstead, we learn from leading scientists about the best practices to maximize the effects of sleep on our organization. We schedule our training schedules and flight patterns to optimize the science of sleep. We spend a good amount of energy to educate athletes and coaches about the impact and effects of sleep. We also allocate resources to monitor sleep patterns for those who want to optimize their recovery process.<\/p>\n \nWhat are specific instances when you have seen tangible improvements in performance in players after proper sleep \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and examples of mistakes and failures in a game when a player was sleep deprived?<\/strong><\/p>\n \nFor the most part, our team does a great job on taking care of their recovery process. They have a deep hunger to be able to play at the highest level of football, and to play freely.<\/p>\n \nWe have noticed the effects of travel on circadian rhythm and performance. A few years ago we noticed trends in our performance and our sports science team was able to create a series of solutions to aid performance.<\/p>\n \nYou are constantly on the road with the Seahawks \u00e2\u20ac\u201d between travel jet lag and practice times, how do you help your players adjust so that they can perform? \nWhat sleep advice do you give to your team before high stress events like the Super Bowl?<\/strong><\/p>\n \nPerspective in life is very powerful. We spend a great deal of time throughout the year to create strategies for athletes to be able to play freely, both in practice and in competition. One way we do this is by creating perspective that every game, every practice, every meeting is not more important than another. We have a phrase that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153every game is a championship opportunity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d By building this perspective, that every practice (and essentially, every moment) matters, we are able to better prepare to meet the demands of anything that comes our way.<\/p>\n \nWhen it comes to sleep and the Super Bowl, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no different than sleep and our first practice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Seattle Seahawks are one of the NFL\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great success stories in recent years. Their 43-8 victory over the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII not only won them a place in football history, it put a national spotlight on the benefits of performance-enhancing practices including yoga, mindfulness and sleep. Ever since, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/strong>
\nFatigue and performance are intimately linked and sleep is one of the important variables to get right to help athletes sustain high effort and enthusiasm, for the long haul.<\/p>\n
<\/strong>
\nWe use good sleep science and well-tested traditions and wisdom from our coaching staff to guide our decisions for practice load, practice time, and meeting schedules. As an organization we want to stay progressive on how to blend tradition and science to be on the cutting edge so that our players and coaches can be their very best.<\/p>\n