Hi, I'm Sam Wood, and this is your motivational moment for this week, and this is why you shouldn't ignore sleep. So sleep's a really interesting one, and I.
Want to preface what I'm going to say first of all by speaking to all of the parents out there, because I used to think anyone that couldn't get seven or eight hours sleep was full of it.
And that was just my young naive.
Never had kids living in a fairyland existence, and now as a dad of soon to before, I absolutely understand that getting your seven or eight hours, which we'll get too soon, is a bit of a pipe dream. And for every mum that I particularly have spoken to without a great deal of empathy, I apologize retrospectively. But for me,
sleep had never been an issue. I loved sleep. I was training a lot, so I sort of found that I was tired getting out really early, sort of five am starts to personal trainer for a couple of decades. I made sure said it got to bed as early as I could. But I always found it interesting when I spoke to my clients that there was a certain percentage that were convinced that they didn't need it. They were no matter how much scientific research I would show
them or articles or whatever it might be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm not one of those people. I just function one hundred percent. Mate, Darry about it up. Four hours all I need.
And they were convinced that they are actually correct.
I don't think they were. They still we could still probably argue about it to this day, but it was really interesting. Those people were absolutely convinced that they were these group that didn't need much sleep, but anything under six hours there is too much evidence to refute that you can function at your maximum, both from a mental
standpoint or a physical standpoint. The magic number is eight, which for a lot of people, if you're a long way off that, it can seem a really difficult challenge. So I always said, of say, let's aim for seven. Let's try and get seven hours sleep. If you can get eight, fantastic, but you want to get seven. And then there's a few other things regarding sleep hygiene or
sleep routines that I think should be addressed here. Because your body really likes going to bed at a consistent time of night, and so these people that binge netflix still to a and when night and then make up for it with a six pm sleep the next night and they sort of fluctuating. Your body doesn't really like that because it can't get into a rhythm. You say, kadi and rhythm, which is what happens when you sleep, is really important for the quality of you sleep, not
just the amount that you're sleeping. And if you're all over the place, it's really hard to get into a nice rhythm and get into that nice deep sleep where your body recovers and your brain recovers at its best. So within sort of thirty to sixty minutes, try and make it consistent. We live in this crazy world of technology, blue light. You know, we're scrolling through Instagram and then we put the phone down one foot from our head and then we try and have a good night's sleep.
Sleep hygiene is really important. Put yourself in a dark, cold room, try not to have any blue light exposure or technology exposure for at least thirty minutes before going to bed. Trying it to eat within thirty minutes of going to sleep, because you won't get in it as deep a sleep if your body's trying to digest a
lot of food and it's sitting in your stomach. So just some simple things like that obviously, meditation techniques or breathing techniques or putting something calming on can help the quality of you sleep and help you fall asleep faster.
But again, it's like anything, these are all practices that you should build up to.
So don't just think you click your fingers and you have to adopt all of these practices tomorrow and become an a grade sleeper overnight. Try one of them at a time, look at the areas that perhaps you're doing the worst, and I promise you this is one of these things that even if you're stubborn and you've convinced yourself.
You don't need it.
It's a case if you don't know what you don't know, because many of the people that have these arguments that I was referring to with had never done any of these things, or never had six or seven hours, so they didn't actually know what their one hundred percent felt like. They'd been running on three cylinders, not knowing they were a six cylinder beast and thought three was full capacity. And now that they're sleeping properly, it's a total game changer.
You've got you're in a better mood, you've got more energy, you're more productive.
You know, the list goes on of the benefits there. So I'm a big, big believer in sleep.
People say to me, what's the most important, you know, exercise and nutrition, which is a crazy question because they're both just as important. Well, one third of that circle is you sleep in your recovery. And unless you start giving that some time and some energy, you really are missing out on a big piece of the puzzle. So your listener task for this week is to listen to all of my podcasts and you'll sleep like a baby.
No, I'm only joking.
I'm only joking as if they're going to produce like The listener task for this week is to try and get to that magic number seven and to identify perhaps where your worst sleep hygiene is or sleep habits are. Let's have a really close look at what you do from ten pm till midnight, and I bet you there's at least sixty minutes of garbage in there that you can cut out.
It's you know, the scrolling.
Through social media, it's the binging on one of your streaming platforms. And if you can't find thirty to sixty minutes in there, I'll be absolutely shocked, So have a look at those just before you go to bed habits and aim for that magic number seven. Even take a little sleep journal, so the first thing you do when you wake up is you write down how you feel you've slept, and then you can write down how that makes you feel and reinforce those good behaviors. Yes,