Training hard is an obvious requirement for athletic success, but ample recovery time is just as important. Sleep plays a huge role in that recovery process, and professional teams are starting to take notice.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll talked about how sleep is a skill, like proper tackling or catching passes, that his team must hone.
"At times we get so wound up that we have to get good, we have to get skilled at sleeping," he told HuffPost sports columnist Jordan Schultz on HuffPost Rise. "So we have to work at some of the coaching points here and try to make sure that we can maximize our opportunities to be rested so that we can be at our best."
How much sleep is necessary for optimal recovery? Eight hours, according to Dr. Michael Gervais, a high-performance psychologist and co-founder of Win Forever Consulting.
"The science is really clear," he told Schultz. "We've got five cycles of sleep, each one being 90 minutes. And it's not until that last cycle [the REM cycle], that we get the deepest recovery."
There are many ways to recover from hard athletic training, Gervais added, but sleep is a key component. "[It] is a wonderful investment."
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