Pat Byrne Episode 38 Stress Management: How to Properly account for stress, Importance of recovery & Sleep, Starting the day out right"

On Episode 38 I sat down with Pat Byrne, Sleep and stress management specialist. Make sure to check below for links to purchase the VSPC sponsored by Simplifaster as well as my personalized code that will save you $15 off. Pat has been involved in the stress management for sometime and has worked with many notable sports franchises in the Pacific Northwest as well as around the world. High School and Collegiate athletes have to deal with a variety of stressors, especially when athletic and training means are combined with academic workloads. Many times those that work with athletes may fail to view the athlete as an integrated systems where stress from all sources collect. 

A common theme that runs throughout the conversation is how biologically we are cyclic and systems within our body run on a 24 hour clock, meaning that we have optimal time periods to learn, react, strain, rest, relax, sleep, etc. In light of our topic there are several instances where Pat and I mentioned references to chronobiology which is an examination of the cyclic nature of the biological systems of the body, which have a major impact on how optimized we are to perform certain actions throughout a 24 hour period.  As mentioned earlier each individual has  biological patterns, most aren't simply lazy in the morning, their chronobiology seems to drive them to stay up later and sleep later, where others tire early in the night and wake before the sun. Temperature is a manner in which we can actually map circadian rhythms of our athletes and examine the vast diversity that is present on our sporting teams. 

 Pat shares an interesting perspective on how he was able to directly monitor the effect that sleep deprivation had on players in the NHL and was able to predict with a high degree of fairness when they would win and lose based upon fatigue or sleep deprived induced drops in reaction time. Pat shares how the wearables on the market don't really do what they claim and really measure other data points and then utilize algorithms to make fairly accurate predictions on amounts of sleep. The thing is that sleep is truly a brain based activity and the wearables really aren't measuring brain waves or important factors that are the true indicators of total sleep/ quality. Pat shares the different stages of sleep, as sleep disruptions from a variety of means may cause individuals to suffer from less then optimal patterns of sleep. 

Pat discusses the steps that individuals can take to increase their sleep hygiene and optimize the sleep that athletes are able to achieve. Light, noise, and temperature are all important factors that must be taken into consideration. We end our conversation by talking about how we can start the day off on the right foot by optimizing early sunlight exposure as well as elevating body temperature, which can be accomplished in more than one manner, I prefer early movement based practices. Crawls, holds, hangs, ground based movement practices. If you're really looking to optimize athletic performance you have to take into account the recovery process and proper stress management. Make sure to check out the links for Pat and Suzanne Byrne's text as well as Fatigue Consult below. 

Virtual Speed and Performance Clinic  Make sure to use my personalized code FTGUPOD15 for 15 off the price!($75)

Inconvenient Sleep: Why teams win and lose link 

Pat Byrne Twitter 

Byrne Fatigue Consulting Linkedin