Anyone else's sleep completely falls apart before competitions?
Genuinely thought the pre-Open sleep chaos was just part of competing. Three years of lying awake at 2am mentally repping movements, waking up with recovery in the yellow, telling myself everyone felt this way. Competed through 26.1 to 26.3 running on fumes and figured that was normal.
It wasn't.
After 26.3 I told myself I'd actually deal with the sleep issue instead of just pushing through it.
Screenshot is from this morning — 90% recovery, HRV at 84 which is 17% above my 30-day baseline of 72. Sleep performance at 76% vs my average of 67%.
Changes I made about six weeks ago, all at once:
- Magnesium glycinate 400mg about an hour after training
- Screens off by 9pm
- Bedroom temp down to around 68°F
- Switched from a white noise speaker to sleep earbuds played brown noise all night, I'm a side sleeper so I needed something that actually stays in. That last one made a bigger difference than I expected.
Can't tell you exactly which change moved the needle most. Probably all of it together. But sleep performance going from 67% to 76% consistently is what I think drove the recovery improvement.
Wish I'd done this before the Open honestly.It’s FRUSTRATING to think about now. If I had figured this out earlier, I probably would’ve performed a lot better.