1770: How Sleep Helps Your Muscles Recover and Grow

What's up? Welcome back to the best fitness podcast in the multiverse. We're even the best in other universes. That's right. We're the best everywhere. Anyway, here's the giveaway today. You'll get free access to MAPS Split. This is a straight up bodybuilder split workout program, and here's how you can win access, right? Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribe to this channel, and turn on your notifications. Do all those things, and if we like your comment, we'll notify you in the comments, and you'll get free access to MAPS Split. One more thing. Got a huge promotion going on this month. We bundled two MAPS workout programs together that we've never bundled before. MAPS Strong, which is a strongman-inspired workout program. So you're talking about strength, strength endurance, and strength stamina, just like a strongman would need. And we bundled it with MAPS Powerlift, which is, you guessed it, a powerlifting program. Get strong in the bench press, the deadlift, and the squat. Both programs are about three months long, so put them together. Half a year of exercise programming. Normally, the retail for both would be 300 bucks, but with this particular promotion, it's $79.99. That's it. $79.99 for the MAPS Power Bundle. And this promotion is only going on this month. After this month, it's going to go away. So if you're interested, head over to mapsmarch.com and sign up for the MAPS Power Bundle. All right, here comes the show. I think this is maybe the most underrated, but talked about all the time, things that you probably wish you could go back and have told your younger self to put a little more focus and energy towards. And the thing is, I remember even in my early 20s, reading the articles, hearing this noise all the time about how important this was. But at that time in my life, I just didn't think that I was neglecting it. And if I was neglecting it, I probably didn't give too much. Are you talking about branched-chain amino acids, Adam? Yes. You got me. You got me. You got to be talking about sleep. 100%. And I don't think I didn't hear about it. I definitely heard about it. And I remember reading the articles. I remember being told it's not new information, but for some reason, for the better half of the first part of most people's lives, we just ignore it and neglect it and just don't prioritize it. And then maybe something happens to all of us. We become fathers, we get older, whatever, have children, and start to feel it maybe catch up. And then all of a sudden, you start to pay attention. And then you start to notice this huge gap between when you do and when you don't put any energy towards this. And so I'd like to talk to you guys about... I'll do a whole episode around just the importance around sleep. Yeah. Same thing. I remember reading as a kid in all the muscle magazines, if you want to build muscle, if you want to get lean, if you want to maximize athletic performance, make sure you get a good night of sleep. Now, what I thought, or at least what I got from that was, as long as I wake up and I can function, that means I had enough sleep. Like, oh yeah, well, of course, if I'm exhausted all day, then I'm going to have bad performance. But the problem is that humans do a pretty good job of functioning with little sleep. What I mean by functioning is like, you could do your day-to-day stuff, especially when you add stimulants to your life, like caffeine. But there's a difference between, you know, like the minimum amount I need to function and what is optimal, right, for health and for adaptations. There's actually quite a big gap. We could function on six hours a night of sleep. Eight hours is ideal. The difference in muscle gain and fat loss and hormones between six and eight is massive. It's not a small difference. It's a huge difference. And just to illustrate how important sleep is, if evolution through millions of years couldn't figure out how to get rid of sleep, because if you think about it, for all intents and purposes, needing to sleep every single night where you're vulnerable, you don't hear predators, you're not out hunting, you're not building shelter, you're not doing things that are, quote-unquote, productive or helpful. Evolution would have figured out a way around sleep, but it didn't. That just goes to show you how necessary sleep is for our bodies and for our living. Well, it was interesting. We just had an episode recently with Ben Pollack talking about basically going through that process, again, of growth. And if you think about when you're in infancy and kind of going through how much you sleep throughout the day because your body's going through all this development, it needs that excess amount of rest and sleep to recover and to build. The building process really revolves heavily around how much rest recovery you get. I think part of the problem is how amazing our bodies are at adapting. I think that what probably happened, at least for me, I think, is I didn't get good sleep. I consistently didn't get good sleep, and then my body adapted to that. You get used to this feeling. Yeah, exactly. My body adapts. I get used to it. I'm getting what I need to get done. I don't really notice a big difference. I don't feel like I'm crashing midday or I don't feel exhausted. I'm playing sports. I'm working. Yeah, you get by. Yeah, I get by. And so I think that's part of the problem is that our bodies are so amazing that they will adapt and figure things out, but there's a much better approach towards this and just adapting and getting by. There's a way to maximize my gains and it's by putting some energy and effort in that direction. Yeah, there was one interesting study where they took two groups and they had one group sleep, I think it was five and a half or six hours, and the other group slept eight hours. And they put them on the same diet. It was actually quite controlled, calorie deficit. Now, here's what's interesting. They lost the same amount of weight. Same deficit, same amount of weight, right? Calories are what matters. Here's where it gets fascinating. 60% more muscle preservation happened in the group that slept eight hours and 55% more fat loss happened. So that's crazy to me because- They lost the same amount of weight. Because calories are controlled. Obviously, their activity, their normal activities are controlled. What is it that the lack of sleep tells the body to pare down muscle instead of body fat? Or what is it about great sleep that makes the body- Well, remember this, not sleep, but from an evolutionary standpoint, getting terrible sleep is sending a stress signal to the body. So if you think about thousands of years ago, why- Remember, humans are terrible in the dark. So this is- For most of human history, we didn't have electric lights, okay? So if the sun went down, it was dark. And unless it was a full moon and clear, even with that, you didn't see very well. You definitely don't see like predators. Like you don't see like a lion would at night. So we're basically screwed, right? So humans at night, we went into our caves and probably like, well, we got nothing else to do. Let's go to sleep and wait till the sun comes up, right? So we do terrible at night. We need that sleep. Now, if we're not asleep in the middle of the night, it probably meant we were starving or predators are nearby and we're getting attacked or we're sick or there's some kind of a plague or illness happening, right? So it's a strong stress signal. And so the body receives a stress signal. And the way the body adapts to stress is it prepares for the stress to survive. And one of the ways it does it is it stores more body fat. Body fat is insurance against starvation. It's one of the more, that's probably one of the main ways that humans got stressed out from most of human history was we just couldn't find food. So your body's like, we need to store more calories and- Pairs down the muscle because it's expensive. Yeah, let's slow down our metabolism so that we don't require as many calories. Let's become adapted so that we can survive a little longer under these stressful conditions. So those two groups had that exactly happen. They lost the same weight on the scale, but one group lost more body fat and kept more muscle than the other group. And it was all the sleep. That was the difference. And I think the most important thing to highlight in a study like that isn't so much, because there's probably a lot of people like, well, I'm not sleeping five hours, but it probably works on a spectrum, I imagine, right? So it's like you're giving an extreme example of these are people that got great sleep versus people that got terrible sleep. And this is what happened to the fat loss and muscle loss during the two groups. But I would imagine that everybody kind of falls somewhere in that spectrum. And the further you are away from optimal sleep, the further you are away from seeing the results that you would want to see from your training and diet. One night of poor sleep, we already see in studies markers of protein breakdown. So have one night of bad sleep and your body's already preparing or starting the muscle pare down process. You also see cravings go up after one night of poor sleep. I always notice that. Yeah, because again, your body is preparing to, it's like making you hungry, eat more, store more calories. This is all counter to our goals, right? Our goals are burn body fat, build muscle, improve our health. And so poor sleep is the biggest wrench you could possibly throw in the machinery. Okay. Just to put it into context, a workout that's subpar or a diet that's subpar isn't going to impact you as negatively as subpar sleep. Subpar, you can actually, by the way, you could survive for far longer without food than you could without sleep. You'll lose your mind. There was a study I read that showed, I think psychosis kicks in after two or three days of no sleep. Yeah. Where people start, like 50% of people start to like. It's most form of torture is how that's applied just because how quickly your body starts breaking down. Yes. It's connected to, very strongly connected to cognitive function, athletic performance. They did a study where they compared six hours of sleep to seven and a half hours sleep in tennis players. They saw accuracy improved by almost 20%. Anecdotally, I could totally notice that. Even if it was just one hour of difference there in terms of like my performance or just like my strength in general was definitely decreased and affected. And think of it this way, right? We're talking about losing muscle and storing body fat. Think of the hormones associated with building muscle or paring muscle down and the hormones associated with burning fat or storing body fat, right? If you're getting poor sleep and we already talked about this in that study, your body's like, okay, we're going to lose more muscle and store more body fat even if we lose the same amount of total weight. If your body's doing that, it'll organize its hormones in a way to do that. So what does that mean in men? Lower testosterone levels, right? Growth hormone levels are going to be blunted. You're going to see higher cortisol levels. Cortisol in the short term gives you more energy, but it's a muscle burning, fat storing hormone if it's elevated for long periods of time, right? You see this imbalance of estrogen and progesterone in women. So the body actually organizes its hormones in a way to burn muscle or pare muscle down and store body fat. So, you know, if you're watching or listening to this and you want healthy, youthful muscle building, promoting fat burning, promoting hormones, one of the worst things you could do is have bad sleep. Even one night will see a change. And in fact, there was a study that showed young men, I believe it was five days of an hour and a half less sleep than they normally get, which isn't much, okay? We say, oh, that's not a big, an hour and a half. If you look at your sleep schedule and you average it out, a lot of us are off by about that much. Young men saw 15% decrease in testosterone. And young men, by the way, are pretty resilient when it comes to testosterone. So I would imagine with older men over the age of 30, it's probably, you probably see double the effect. Now, how often would you guys say when you're looking back at your clients that you trained over years, how often would you say that this was like a major factor that once they kind of unlocked this, all of a sudden their body started to respond? It was huge. I'd say 99% of the time. The problem was I didn't make it that big of a, I didn't make that big of a deal with it with clients until the second half of my career. Yeah, well, because initially you realize everybody's busy and is like, you know, trying to make a living and like there's all these factors in between. It's one of those like sort of uncontrollable factors as a trainer that you suggest, but you really don't emphasize quite as much because it's like what I can control is like at least how they're moving and then the nutrition. There's that. And there's also this. I could help people. Imagine if you were this kind of a trainer. Oh yeah, you should definitely eat better. But then you don't. No, no. Just like, well, what do you, what does that mean? What do you mean by that? Right. Oh, you should definitely work out better. And then you leave the client alone. This is what I would do with sleep. I would say, yeah, you should definitely get better sleep. You should definitely make sure you have eight hours of sleep. And then that's it. I didn't understand. You need a plan. There's structure to it. There's programming to it. Just like there is with workouts and nutrition. Well, part of the problem has to be, I mean, I'm curious. What do you think the average trainer age is? You got to think that most trainers are in their like 20s and 30s. Mid 20s. Yeah. So I bet. I mean, at least I know that one of the reasons why I was terrible at communicating because I wasn't taking my own advice. You know, I don't, I don't coach very well on ---- that I don't do. So it's, I would say the same thing. Like, oh yeah, get good sleep. But that's about the extent of my conversation around. It would be that because even myself didn't realize, even though, again, had heard it forever, did not realize how much it was potentially impacting me. Right. And also among the three of us, if you include your formal education, Justin and certifications, I mean, among the three of us, at least, you know, a dozen or more certifications, how much space did certifications dedicate to sleep? Now they would say things like sleep is important. Half a page. Yeah. But there was no structure. Yeah. There was no, here's how you get better sleep. Here's, here are the things you can do that have a great impact. And that was the big problem is I would tell clients, yeah, you need to get good sleep. It's good for you. But, and they would say, okay. You know, just like if you told them, have, yeah, you got to eat healthy. Right. Without coaching. That would be nice. You know, I'd get that a lot. Yes. Without coaching them through the process. So what I want to do in, I think we've made the case that sleep is extremely important. And one of the single factors, if you improve, by the way, I'm going to make this, I'm going to be very clear with this. If you, if you make a dedicated effort to improving your sleep quality, if you prioritize your sleep, within three to four days, you will notice changes in your performance. Okay. That's how fast you'll notice within a month, you'll notice body composition changes. Within three months, you'll notice significant visible changes in the mirror. That's how powerful this can be. So, you know, Especially if you're hitting a plateau, I remember like running into that issue with some clients who were putting in so much work and they're really dialed in nutritionally. And it's just like, what's that key that's going to unlock my progress here? Like, what is it? And it's just because sleep is just like, well, I don't know if I can do that because work and cause this and this. But if you really prioritize it, that's the key. And I want to know, I'm going to say this and I want to make sure I back it up by saying I'm empathetic to people's challenges. So I don't want to sound like a, like a jerk or an asshole, but nine out of 10 times, it's bullshit excuses. Okay. This is for me too. You talk to anybody about sleep. Oh, I'm so busy. Oh, it's so I can't. No, no, no. I know when I break things down nine out of 10 times, it's because you don't want to give up watching Netflix, you know, two hours past when you should be in bed or there are certain things you don't want to give up because you enjoy certain things. So you're making a trade. This is a definite sacrifice. Or you're not as efficient with your time during the day. You don't, you know, respect your own boundaries and like trying to like really, you know, be as efficient as possible within this window. Well, I've even seen it where the clients just actually almost trying too hard. They're, they're training all the time. They're training so much that me telling them to back off the training and actually focus more on the sleep. And then all of a sudden, boom, we see this huge increase in either building muscle or in losing body fat just because they were coming to the gym at nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night, because they didn't want to miss the day of working out. And it's like, listen, you know, it's even more important is that you getting to sleep, watch what happens when we cut back on your three times a week and late at night training, get rid of it completely, focus on your sleep. And now you're two to three days a week of training. All of a sudden your body responds. So I got a funny story, right? So when I used to have my wellness studio in my wellness studio, I was the trainer, right? I was the head trainer and I had other trainers in there. And I was, when I, when I owned it for most of the time, I owned it. I was fitness guy, right? So I understood resistance training, cardio, macros, proteins, fats, carbs, supplements, that kind of stuff. But I was at least aware enough to know that there's a wellness side to things and that I should respect and appreciate the stuff and offer it in my facility. So in my facility, I had wellness experts and there was a young lady that worked there. She was a physical therapist, but she was also excellent with wellness. Her name was Lori. I learned a lot from her, by the way. I brought her up before on the show and she would always talk about the value of sleep, the value of sleep. Now at this point, I think I'm 29, 30. And so yeah, yeah, yeah. Nod my head, but goes in one ear at the other because like you said, Adam, you know, I was, I could get by. Not a big deal. I'll sleep when I'm dead. That was my attitude, right? Well, at this point, I remember I'm training and I had this goal of getting a 600 pound deadlift under 200 pound body weight. It's a big deal. And I would talk about it all the time and they would tease me about it. And I was stuck at like 550, just stuck, stuck, stuck. There's nothing I, no matter what I did, I couldn't get it up. And so I remember her and I got in this huge debate in the gym and she's like, you need more sleep. She knew that I was a maniac and I'd stay up late reading studies and all that stuff. And I would argue with her. No, I don't. I get by. I'm one of those. And I was convinced I was one of those people that only needs six hours of sleep, which by the way, it's like less than 0.1% of the population that could do this. It does exist, but it's about as rare as, you know, having genetics to play basketball in the NBA. So you're not that person, but I thought I was. And we had this huge debate. And I remember she called me out. She said, I dare you to take what I'm doing seriously for one week. Just take what I'm saying seriously for one week. And if I'm wrong, you can tell me. And I said, I'll take that challenge. So I made a concentrated effort to get more sleep. And over the course of a month, because after that first week, I noticed, oh, wow, I feel really good. Like what's going on? Something to this. 30 days later, I had a 600 pound deadlift. So 50 pound increase in my deadlift from doing this. And that's when I finally became convinced like, OK, this is a very important big deal. And it is. It's a massive one. The trap is though, you looked probably good. You were strong already. I didn't know what my potential was. That's right. You didn't know what you didn't know. And I think that's where I think where most people get stuck. And then again, I do think that we have a lot of trainers that are young, that are just like we all were when we first started. And so here's the challenge to all the trainers and people out there who are fitness fanatics. OK, you're all bad asses. You could do anything for 30 days. Do this for 30 days. What we're about to say, it's a 30 day challenge. Do it for 30 days. Mark down your PRs, your body fat percentage, change nothing else. Do everything exactly the same. Just do what we're about to say for the next 30 days. Mark what happens at the end. And I promise you will see some significant changes to all the things that I just listed. So what we're going to do is we'll list the things that have the biggest impact. There's lots of things that can affect your sleep. But let's talk about the ones that have the biggest impact based off of all the research that's out there. So the first one, and this one I didn't realize had a big impact until I read some studies on it. And it makes perfect sense. Yeah. Because I didn't realize this was connected sleep, but getting about 20, at least 20 to 30 minutes of sunlight during the day helps with your sleep at night. This is part of setting your circadian rhythm. So, and if you work in an office and you don't get any sunlight and you do everything else good and you wonder why you can't get any good sleep, try sitting next to a window at the office instead. Get the sun on you. At least get the signal. Yeah. Like you're sending it to your cells. Your cells literally receive that signal. And hormonally it shifts. So that way towards the end of the night, you do have more of a chance of feeling that, getting to that place where you feel nice and calm and ready for rest. Well, it's part of the body's natural clock, right? So we all have this natural clock that tells us we're supposed to rise and kind of sleep. And then there's a certain window that we should be up and active. And then when the sun goes down, we're supposed to go to sleep. What happens because of artificial light and all the technology that we have right now, you could easily, the sun could have been up for three or four hours and you have yet to see it. So you don't get that natural signal to let your body know, oh yeah, it's six o'clock in the morning or seven o'clock in the morning because you haven't seen that. And the same thing goes for shutting down at nighttime of knowing when it's time to shut down. I feel like everybody's felt what that feels like if they got onto the beach or they had a long day out at the park and they just have lots of exposure of sun. It really makes you tired towards the end of the day. I used to think it was because I was active, but then I've been working in gyms. So one gym in particular, we all work there, Hillsdale 24. It's a freaking, it's a sunless dungeon. There's windows in the front, but if you go in the weight area, it's all electric lights. There's no sunlight. And I was active, right? I'd work out, I'd move around, whatever. And then the weekend would come and I'd go to the park or the beach and I would arguably be less active because I'd be laying out and chilling. And that night I had the best sleep. I'm like, am I more active? I can't be. I work out. I'm doing cardio. I'm walking around, touring people in the gym. It was the sunlight. It was because I got sun. As a father, this is one of the great things about being a parent is you get to be a little scientist with your kids because you can control everything, right? And I noticed this with my kids. If they're not getting good sleep, get them out in the sun during the day. I'll throw them outside. Yes. And then they get better sleep. I noticed a huge difference with Max getting him outside and playing versus allowing him to be around the TV or the iPad. There's certain days where that's tough to control. It's raining outside and overcast and terrible weather. And so he gets to be inside. He gets a little bit of iPad time and stuff like that. But that night is always such a challenge to get him to go to sleep. If we have a day where we go down to the beach and spend the day playing on the beach all morning and early afternoon and we come home, dude, that kid is... Sleeps so good. An angel going down. He wants to go down. You could tell he's ready but versus being stimulated by tech and not getting the natural light, that completely throws him off. Do you guys ever read about people who live in places like Alaska where there's two or three months out of the year where the sun doesn't even come up? And you read about the insomnia issues. One of the ways that they solve that is they use what are called light boxes or red light therapy like Juve, for example, which it's not a replacement, but it's better than nothing. They'll use it during the day and then they'll get better sleep at night because they're not exposed to the sun during the day. Sun doesn't come up. It's dark all day long. Well, and two, we've kind of brought this up if you've had jet lag or you're in situations where you travel a lot like that where you're going to a different time zone, how to sort of reset your circadian rhythms that way. It's one of those kinds of techniques but literally trying to keep to that schedule that you have set out where you have your best sleep window is ideal. Dude, speaking of which, okay, this is a very important one and I'm glad you said jet lag. So we've all experienced jet lag. You go, you travel from one place to another. There's a three hour difference and it takes, you know, two or three days for you to feel like you're back to normal, you know, with just a three hour difference, let alone, you know, if you go across the world, nine hour difference. Ooh, that could be a nasty week of adjustment. But like we just came from Florida, which is what I think a three hour difference. And I could tell for two or three days it took my body some time. So jet lag is a real thing. It definitely affects your sleep negatively. And yet people give themselves jet lag every weekend. So one of the biggest mistakes people make is they don't go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day. What they tend to do is Monday through Thursday, they wake up and go to bed at the same time. Come Friday, I go to bed three hours later and I sleep in on the weekend. And what they're literally doing is they're readjusting their circadian rhythm or their circadian clock once a week every single week, which actually has a very detrimental effect on the body. So one thing you can do now, of course there's special occasions and you go out with your friends and whatever. So I'm not saying that there isn't any value to staying up late sometimes, but if it's just a weekend, keep it the same as you normally do. And you'll find tremendous benefit to literally waking up at the same time on Saturday as you do on Friday or Thursday and going to bed at the same time. You're not going to have this catch up come Monday. One of the reasons why people hate Monday so much is that they go to bed late Friday, go to bed late Saturday, go to bed late Sunday. Come Monday, I got to wake up. It's a totally different schedule. I feel like dog ----. So studies show this consistent wake and sleep times has a significant improvement in sleep quality. I think this highlights to a point that we talked about on our recent podcast where we were kind of having a debate or conversation around the importance of training in the morning consistently. I think this is another thing that highlights why those people have so much success is those tend to be the people that have this very strict schedule that they consistently live by. They're not, oh, when I'm free, I'll go to the gym. It's at every morning at 5 a.m. I get there. So if that person gets to the gym at five in the morning, they have to go to bed at a decent hour every single night to be consistent with that. And I think that is half of what promotes their results is the ability to be consistent with that. Totally. And then the fact that they probably have a better balance of sleep. Hey, you want to know a great way to teach you, to learn this lesson the hard way? Have a baby. Because I remember the first time I had kids, like my oldest, right? I remember learning this. Ultimate test. You know, when you don't have kids, you go to bed late and you're like, oh, I could sleep in the next day. Not ideal. I just talked about that. But at least you can try to sleep an extra two or three hours the next day to make up for it a little bit. But when you have a baby, they wake up at the same time no matter what. And I remember that. I would go out Friday night and Saturday morning, kids up at 6 a.m. no matter what. So I'm like, oh, I can't do this anymore. No matter what, I'm waking up early, you know? Another one is to prepare for sleep like you do for other important things in your life. So people who are watching this, who are fitness fanatics, we all have a ritual that's about, you know, 30 minutes to 60 minutes before we work out, right? Most people who work out consistently don't just, boop, ready to work out. 30 minutes before they'll take their pre-workout or they'll get their ritual, you know, clothes on or drive to the gym, listen to the right music. We all take our workouts very seriously and we prepare for our workouts, okay? Whether it's mobility, you know, priming, whatever. Do this for sleep as well. An hour before bed, have a routine. Get yourself ready for bed because I think we take for granted, we think that we could just put our heads on the pillow and our brain is ready to go to sleep. It doesn't work that way. I find it interesting that we, I don't know if this is a cultural thing. I know Doug's probably the most traveled out of us. Is it just, is it just, is it American thing that we just, we totally neglect the sleep thing? Like we, everybody has a morning routine, right? For somewhat, right? Depending on how extensive, but everybody gets up and showers, brushes their teeth. Yeah, same routine, right? Yeah, like at the same time, every single day, very consistently to get off to work and stuff. But yet I feel like our culture puts no effort towards any sort of consistency towards going to bed. Yet you can make the case that that part of the cycle is the most important. Is it a cultural thing? Is there other cultures? Do you know? I think that may be true. I can only speak for the Japanese, but one of their rituals is taking a bath before bed. And they have a very deep, yeah, they have a very deep bathtub there where the water goes up to your neck, basically. And then it recirculates the water and keeps it hot. And the Japanese custom is to take a shower before you get into the bathtub. And so what they do is the whole family will take the same bath, but they'll shower before they get in so the water doesn't get dirty. Right. And then they'll do that right before bed. Interesting. And I'll tell you, you do that and you sleep well. That's part of my routine right there. That's literally what we get down to. Yeah, and by the way, the sleep routine doesn't have to be the super crazy thing that you do. But like what I do is an hour before, I just make sure it's dark. I actually do this before an hour before. I do two or three hours before, but you could do an hour. I make sure it's dark in the house. So we have light dimmers or we have these little nightlight salt lamps that we plug in and we just make it real dark. And what's funny. So my wife was a big stickler of this, right? This was a big deal for her. And the way I grew up, we didn't do that. It was like bright as hell until it's time for bed, turn the lights off and then hit the pillow. And so she did this. And at first I was like, oh my gosh, okay. We're going to be in the dark for two hours. And you know, but she's my wife. I'll respect it, whatever. Now it's like, I will never go back to the old way. Like if I'm over someone's house and we're hanging out and it's nine o'clock at night and their light's hella bright, I could tell a big difference. I'm like, man, we should turn the lights down. It's dark. So that's like one piece of that, right? You could wear blue light blocking glasses, which will help simulate that. So if you can't turn the lights down, if you're working or you're in an office or whatever, and you got bright lights above you, you could wear blue light blocking glasses and it'll simulate to some extent having the lights be being dim. Well, I'm going to bring up one. That's probably been the cause of a lot of domestic fights. And that is the thermostat. So yeah, I have to make sure that before I go to bed, like it has to be cool enough. So that way, like the covers are actually inviting for me. Like it's just enough to kind of keep me a certain temperature where I'm like warm enough, but I'm not too hot because if it literally is just a degree too hot, I'm going to get up. I'm going to be more prone to having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night to waking up, looking what time it is on the clock. Like I am just more prone to waking up. And so there's a few, thankfully with technology, there's a few options out there as well, like a chili pad or something you can put on top of your mattress where it actually keeps you consistently that temperature. Yeah, what I like about the chili pad, the Uhler, so that's the one that has the two sides. What I like about it is sometimes, well, I don't want to say sometimes, probably every time husband and wife or partners aren't the same with their temperature preference. So it's like, I want it colder. You want it hotter. What do we do? But so, you know, with the Uhler, you know, it's like, okay, I like mine at 64. You like yours at 68. Like, that's fine. Your side is your side. My side is my side. And we both get ideal. Have you ever met a couple that's the same? Or have any of you ever dated anyone that's the same? I've never met somebody who has been the same. Not unless they're like the same body mass and metabolism. Like I wouldn't think that anybody's in the same climate. Yeah, you haven't dated any 230 pound six foot chicks lately? I'm serious. I've never heard a couple ever talk about like that they agree on the temperature thing. It has to be like one of the number one things where people are divided. And so what a challenge, you know, that's a challenge at my house too. And that's why I say the whole chilly Uhler thing has been like life-changing for us. Dark room is another one is, and I mean dark, like, so people turn the lights off, but they don't realize that there's lots of light pollution that like, for example, in the place I'm at now, the light switches have little lights on them to show you that the light switch is there. So that little bit of light coming off the light switch or your alarm clock, you know, and it's bright right there telling you the time or the window, you know, it's not blocked out. So there's a crack of light coming in from the street light or whatever. I have a camera in the corner, you know, just looking at me. I'm just kidding. You're a weirdo. I guess I'm the only one. Or the TV's got like a little red light on it. All those little lights, it's light pollution, and they all send a little signal to the brain that there's some light that's out there. So it actually makes a big difference. So what we did in our bedroom is we took some tape and we taped over all the little- She did the same thing? Same thing. I think it's ridiculous. I think that's like overkill for me, but- It makes a difference for me. I mean, yeah, until you ******* stub your toe in the corner of the bed, you know what I'm saying? It's just like no light whatsoever, but she is for sure that way. And Max, sometimes I tell her that she's ruined the kid because he's been trained that way to have- I mean, we have the blackout film with the blackout curtains with the double seal over it. So there's like no light creeping in from the window. Every little monitor thing that's in the room has got tape over it. So there's nothing in there, but boy, you better know the layout of that room before you go in there. I just picture Adam waking up and putting in like night vision, like desert storm. That's actually not a bad idea, now that you say that. Like that one, you ever see that dude with the, he's blind and he clicks his mouth? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what Adam's got. You know what helps too? So, because not everybody wants to go that crazy, right? So, I mean, you have salt lamps, you've got bulbs now that are like the- Yeah, the red. Yeah, red is way less, way less stimulating. So we have that over. So kind of what we try and do at our house, luckily it's cool a lot where I live. So we actually use the fireplace, like I'd say 90% of the year. So as soon as the sun goes down and we'll turn the, there's, in our kitchen, we have two bulbs that are the red bulbs or whatever that put off that kind of light. That's real light. So we turn that on and then we have a fire going and that's enough to kind of light up the living, dining, kitchen area to where we can see and get around and just try and make a habit of that. And then, of course, I like to watch movies and TV towards the end of the night with Katrina. And so I just get in the habit of, you know, putting my blue blockers on right away. So those things- You do the Felix Gray, right? Yeah, so if I'm, so if it's early, so I actually have, I notice a big difference in both of their models, right? Both the nighttime ones and then- Oh, the nighttime ones are strong. So what I'll do is as soon as the sun goes down, I'll put them on, especially if I'm gonna be watching TV and stuff like that for the daytime ones. And I'll save the nighttime ones till like the last hour before I go to bed. Because if I, once I put those nighttime ones on, it'll actually make me sleepy. It's wild how, like the other ones just, I feel like if I wear the daytime blue blockers, it won't affect my sleep negatively, but it won't necessarily make me sleepy to go to sleep. If I put the nighttime ones on, it'll actually make me like kind of drowsy and want to crash. So I like to put those on, right? Like those are, I keep those at my bed and then I keep the other ones downstairs. Yeah, I do the same thing. In fact, if I want to watch a movie for longer than 45 minutes, I have to, I can't put on the night ones. Yeah, or else you'll fall asleep. Yeah, about 45 minutes is my max. Then I start to, you know, to nod off. Now, earlier you kind of mentioned pre-workouts. I want to go back to that in terms of caffeine intake throughout the day, because I just, I imagine like your average gym bro, gym Jane, I don't know what you call them for girls, but like basically before their workouts just becomes a ritual, right? And who knows when they're actually scheduling that workout, if it's like in the middle of the day or even sometimes even, I've seen people do pre-workouts at like five o'clock in the afternoon and speaking to sort of how long that caffeine stays in your system, affecting your sleep. Yeah, I think the quarter, so it's a half-life and a quarter-life thing. The quarter-life is what, 12 hours? So meaning a quarter of it is active in your body 12 hours later. So people don't realize this, they have caffeine and they think because they can fall asleep and because they sleep that the caffeine didn't affect them, but studies will show that sleep quality gets affected with very small amounts of caffeine. So ideally you'd want to have no caffeine. I mean, what I recommend is at least 10 hours or 12 hours before you go to bed, but studies will show six hours, seven hours is okay for some people. I'm not one of those people. So if I have caffeine, the latest I'll have caffeine is about, I don't know, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., and I'm in bed and asleep by 9.30 p.m. So it gives me a good eight hours before I go to bed. So as I've gotten older, that time has got pushed back. Yeah, I'm at like 11 now. It used to be four. Back in gym days when we were working in the gyms, I could have like my second energy drink as long as I had it before four o'clock, I could still go to bed that night where I find now almost anything after noon, and I'm going to, and maybe I can go to sleep still, but it won't be good sleep. It'll be disrupted by something, you know, like I'll be getting up throughout the night. Another one is to not eat at least a couple hours before you go to bed. So your circadian rhythm isn't just affected by light. Your organs. Your digestion, yeah. Also have a circadian rhythm. When you eat something, your organs tell the body to stay awake as well. So, and you gotta keep in mind, that's like a two and a half hour process too. So if you eat something right before you go to bed, your digestive system's still up and running for like the next two and a half, three hours. Not to mention you're lying down. Right, which slows it down even more. There's a reason why your mouth is at the top of your body and where the food comes out after you digest it is at the bottom of your body. I mean, thank God. Yeah, because it follows gravity, right? So now what you're gonna do is you eat and you lay down. So now your food has to move horizontally through your body and become digested. So it causes digestive issues as well. Inflammation being one of the big side effects. This is why that old eat before six o'clock thing, I know that it's been debunked for fat loss and stuff like that, but I still think- In practice it works though. I know, exactly. That's where, and we've mentioned that before on the show because I know that's been something that we know that if calories are all equal, then it doesn't matter. But the truth is, I think those habits of trying to eat before six or seven o'clock every single night is good habits to have. And I think that in general promotes a healthier body, more likely to be able to lose body fat. So even though there's nothing directly connected to that and if calories are the same, it is. But I think that that's just a bad behavior. Yeah, I don't eat past 6.30 or seven o'clock at night. And if I do, I notice some digestives. I don't get heartburn like you do, Justin, but I know people who get heartburn and stuff. Yeah, I gotta be real careful with that. Screws them up if they eat really close to bed. Now, another thing you can do to kind of figure out what's working for you and what's not working are to have wearables. So there's wearable tracking devices that will measure your sleep and how many times you woke up. And if you're getting good oxygen, if you're in good REM stages of sleep. And these are good because there's some individual variances here. So we talked about like, for example, caffeine. For some people, it affects them more than others. It affects everybody, but some people more than others. The temperature of the room, electronics, all that stuff. Wearables can really help you peer into what's happening when you sleep. I remember I had a client, and this is a big one, by the way, especially for the lifting community, especially for men. I had a client once wear a wearable and saw that they were waking up in the night, but they don't remember waking up. But they're like, oh my God, I wake up a lot throughout the night and my blood oxygen levels kind of declined a little bit. He got tested, he has sleep apnea. And once he got treated for sleep apnea, it was like night and day. Sleep apnea is way more common in men and way more common in muscular men. So the musculature of the neck and the shoulder, lots of affects your breathing and your sleep as well. I'm dealing with this right now. I've put on more muscle recently and I snore now. And so my sleep quality is not as good. I think this is a massive consideration, especially for who we're talking to here to really consider and to even, they have sleep tests and things available for this. But I mean, for what we've been told in terms of even like just gaining neck size and muscle, like that'll affect how you sleep and maybe have sleep apnea, your tongue growing because your whole body's growing. These are all things that like happen within the fitness community. You're out there like gaining muscle and everything's going great, but now it's affecting your sleep in maybe a negative way. So I think this is one of those sort of underlying things. A lot of guys like myself don't really want to admit this may be affecting sleep. Oh, I guarantee all of us have at least a small little bit of sleep apnea. Well, this is another reason why I really like wearables, right? So in the fitness space, there's kind of like a divide of people that talk about wearables. Some people swear by them and love them. And then other people think, oh, they're trashed or inaccurate. They're not consistent. And I tend to disagree with that group. I think that, you know, back when we first started our fitness journeys, there was so little tech that supported. Everything was done long form. You had to take notes yourself and then try and assess that way. I mean, imagine trying to figure out your sleep quality without technology, you know, 20, 30 years ago, trying to, you know, what would you do? You'd have to take a notepad and like write down, oh, I woke up at this time and like what you felt like. Oh, I mean, it's just, it's crazy. And so with this, at least you can see trends. Right. And so I think the point of this is very similar to what we talk about using it as a fat loss or a muscle building tool is that it's less about how precise the number is and how accurate is more so about looking for patterns, right? And looking for things that you might have not seen had you not wore this tool. Like, I mean, I remember the first time I was wearing the body bug. I didn't realize how much I was getting up through the night, even if it was just to wake up, go to the bathroom, then you would see how long it took for my heart rate to come back down for me to go back into a sleep. It's like, man, even though I wake up, I go pee, that's a short period of time. It disrupts my sleep that it takes me a while to fall all the way back into a deep sleep. So that total time that gets disrupted in the entire night is like an hour plus of time when you combine it all together. So those little things can start to give you insight. And then it was a small behavior change for me. Like I realized that I have a very small bladder. I cannot drink a ton of water late at night. So I have to get most of my fluid in early and try and restrict how much I have of that towards the end of the night, or else I'm going to get up throughout the night and do that. And so these tools give us little bits of insight like that. So I find a lot of value in using these things. Now, the last thing we'll talk about are supplements that can help. Now, the reason why it's the last thing is because- It can mask some of the problems. It can mask issues. You can become dependent on some of these. There's very few supplements you can use regularly to help with sleep. Most of them are more like emergency. I like to consider them like emergency remedies. Like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling anxious, or I had a really stressful day, or I really need to get good sleep. Like interventions. Some of them, unless it's something you're deficient in, and by taking it is... Because that's been... I know where you're heading with this conversation. And me actually supplementing with the Ned Mellow, like their magnesium supplement, has been absolutely game-changing for me. Yes, that's one you could take on a regular basis, especially if you need the magnesium. Yes. It's not like you build a tolerance. Which most people do. Yes. So it's like you build a tolerance. It's not like this occasional intervention. Yeah, so you got to be careful that like the melatonins and the sleep, the Tylenol PMs and the sleep aids. But if you're deficient in something that is going to contribute to you getting better sleep, that is something that I would recommend. So you brought up magnesium. That's one that you can use consistent. Chamomile is a mild sedative, and studies shows you can use it relatively regularly. In fact, you can even give it to kids. So if you're somebody that tends to be a little anxious when you go to bed, you find it hard to settle down, chamomile. Just like a herbal tea? Yeah, like an herbal chamomile. It's been used for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. And then there's some other things you can use that help with the relaxation process that are more like occasional interventions. Valerian root is one. Passionflower is another one. I don't think I've tried either one of those before. Yeah, and they will. They're like sedatives. So they'll make you kind of... Are they all teas? Kind of like the chamomile? You can do teas, or you could do tinctures or pills. They come in lots of different forms. You could do GABA can be good. GABA will knock me out. Melatonin. I know a lot of people talk about melatonin. Now, here's the thing with melatonin. They're almost all way overdosed. And studies will show high doses cause people to feel groggy and actually have reduced sleep quality. Now, there's some applications for high dose melatonin for certain things, like antioxidant properties, and there may be some antiviral effects. We're talking specifically about sleep here. For sleep, you want about half a milligram to a milligram. Most melatonin supplements are like three milligrams, five milligrams. Five to 10 milligrams is what you see normally. Yeah, no. You want half a milligram to a milligram, and you want sustained release because otherwise it all hits your system. You'll sleep, and then you'll wake up in the middle of the night as it wears off. Like a zombie. Yeah, and then you'll wake up like at two o'clock in the morning, what's going on here because the melatonin kind of wore off. Hemp oil is another one. I like to use that more as an occasional intervention, mainly because it's anxiolytic, right? It kind of relaxes you a little bit. So I like to use most of these as like, for example, if I have a big day the next day, I have to do a big presentation or a big podcast, and I know I'm a little excited in my head, and I know it's going to be harder to fall asleep, then I may save those for something like that. But they're definitely not things to use on a daily basis, except for maybe, like you said, the magnesium. Right, and the reason for that, it's not like they're going to be harmful. It's just that you're probably masking something else, and you're not getting to the real cost. You also build a tolerance for a lot of this stuff, like valerian and passion flower, you'll find your body stops responding as well to it, and you have to use more and more. And it doesn't necessarily improve sleep quality. Now, sleep is better than no sleep, but sleep quality, good quality versus bad quality, I mean, makes a big difference as well. So just because you're getting sleep doesn't mean you're getting good quality sleep. And if there's things you can do to get good quality sleep, like the sleep routine, having a cooler room, night eating before bed, getting sunlight, all that stuff, that's far superior to taking a powerful or strong medication or herbal concoction to make you fall asleep. So there you have it. There's your structure. There's your plan. Now you have a program, right? You got programming for sleep that can make a big difference. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness or health goal. You can also find us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at mindpumpjustin. Adam is on Instagram at mindpumpadam. And you can find me on Twitter at mindpumpsal.