Hear plenty of performance podcasters, making it simple to think that napping is a secret weapon: rather than a sticking plaster following restless night, but a path towards enhanced cognition, improved mood and possibly quicker running times. Elite athletes do it regularly – along with professional piano players, UFC champions & high-profile executives. Yet, when you don't have a room for napping or a career that permits frequent naps, is it *truly* sufficient advantages to a burst of shut-eye to merit the hassle? Can you find a reliable way to nod off promptly? Furthermore, can you truly ensure you’ll wake up feeling better, instead of groggy?
Understanding The Reasons for Napping
“We can identify three main reasons for taking a nap for many people,” says an expert sleep science professor. “One is known as recovery napping, essentially what happens when you’ve had insufficient sleep overnight. Secondly, there's pre-emptive sleep, which involves pre-empting insufficient sleep in the future, for instance when working overnight shifts. The third reason is “appetitive drive”, which simply comes down to desire: there is a moment to sleep in the daytime, and it's pleasant to nap.”
The first thing to undertake, so, is to examine your reason for napping. “Naps can be really helpful when overnight rest is disturbed for reasons beyond your control – for example, when you are a new parent, or recovering from sickness or intense exercise,” states a sleep expert. “Yet when you’re napping since your night sleep seems unreliable or broken, that’s often an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it should be. In such situations, napping can become part of the issue, rather than the answer. Use napping for brief periods for temporary issues – the focus ought to remain a robust and regular overnight rest.”
The Perfect Snooze Time
This implies that daytime sleep must not be too extended to disrupt your nighttime sleep, and best should not occur post-3 p.m. (based on what time you retire overnight). What duration is wise? Guidelines are mixed. In one of a prominent study about napping, researchers at Nasa noted that astronauts had improvements of over 50% in vigilance and a 34% increase in performance post a 26-minute snooze (to be precise, this counted a six-minute long sleep onset time). “I’d suggest setting a timer for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority fall asleep quickly,” says a sleep expert. “There’s a lot of guidance out there concerning the ideal number of minutes, however, that can cause people to feel more stressed than anything else – and the least helpful action one can do while aiming to fall asleep is worry about it.”
Should you decide to take an extended nap, steer clear of the period between 45 and 60 minutes that induces sleep inertia, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “The science indicates it is preferable to take a lengthier snooze of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the sleep scientist. “45 minutes is long enough to send you into deep sleep and it is more probable to feel disoriented upon awakening – whereas if you extend it slightly longer to a full sleep cycle, you’re likely to be on the end a natural sleep cycle and should get up feeling more alert. Though if you nap for an hour and a half, it will affect the quality of your sleep that night.”
Finding an Ideal Snooze Setting
Regarding specific techniques, suggestions are diverse. Some experts suggest adopting comparable habits you’d use to foster quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a comfortable bed and as much darkness as you can manage. Some advise that you should simply nap on the sofa in the existing light is available – both to discourage post-nap grogginess and to “protect” your sleeping quarters as the environment your brain links with nighttime rest. “Falling asleep is notoriously difficult to will,” says an expert. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it becomes harder to lie down and essentially tell yourself to nod off. There’s got to be some sleep pressure there to initiate sleep in the first place. I can usually take a nap in full light and awaken on my own alarm-free, but what helps many individuals is to wait for an instance when they are naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly ease into sleep.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and if options are scarce – for instance, if you’re trying to fit in some shut-eye on a train or in a soundproof office pod – there’s nothing wrong with bringing some accessories. “When I’m working with elite athletes, I advise that they don’t get used to their own bed for naps, as they’re going to have|they will
