Ep045: Sport, Sleep, and Productivity!--with Dr. Chu

www.deepintosleep.co

Dr. Alan Chu

with Dr. Yishan Xu

 
 

TODAY’S GUEST

Dr. Alan Chu is an Assistant Professor and the Chair of the Sport, Exercise, and Performance Psychology Master’s Program at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. He is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant working with athletes and coaches across high school, college, and professional levels on psychological skills training. In addition, he’s a Self-Determination Theory International Scholar who conducts research on motivation, particularly in the sport and exercise domains.



WHAT WILL WE LEARN

  • Sports and performance psychology is multi-faceted

    • Relaxation and mindfulness techniques taken from clinical psychology are incorporated with sports, music, and other types of performance to manage stress and anxiety and establish peak performance.

  • Sleep improves sports performance in ways like strength, speed, and accuracy among others.

  • Sleep directly affects stress and anxiety, and can affect athletes and performers more because of the pressure for competition. More sleep can help improve these issues!

  • Self-determination theory (SDT) emphasizes that intrinsic motivation (for their own enjoyment) is much more effective than extrinsic motivation (doing it to please someone else).

 

What to consider, after knowing all these?

  • Corporations and businesses may want to consider starting the work day a little bit later so people can sleep and support their goals!



RESOURCES




Thank You for Listening!

Newsletter and Download Free Sleep Guidence E-Book:

CBT-I Courses:

Podcast Links:

Transcript

-  0:02  

Do you know, actually a lot of famous athletes they sleep a lot? Do you know if we can improve the lens of our sleep somewhat.



-  0:14  

The performance when we do sports can be improved. So there are a lot of research behind athletes house performance, and sleep. So I learned a lot of this from our guest today Dr. Alan Chu. He is an assistant professor and chair of the sport, exercise and performance psychology master's program at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. He is a certified mental performance consultant, working with athletes and coaches across high school, college and professional levels on psychological skills training. In addition, he's a Self Determination Theory International Scholar who conducts research on motivation, particularly in the sports and exercise domains. So I'm very happy to have Alan with us today to share with us ins and outs of how sleep can impact athletes, can impact sports, and at the end of this episode, he also shares with us something about motivation theory. Welcome to deep into sleep. I'm your host ishan. Let's welcome Dr. Alan Chu.



-  1:44  

Welcome Dr. Alan Chu. Welcome to Deep into Sleep.



-  1:48  

Thank you for having me.



-  1:50  

So I know you're a sports psychologist. What is a sports psychologist?



-  1:57  

Yeah, that's a good question. That's a Christian bed. Many people ask when I mentioned I'm a sports psychology professor or sports psychology consultant. So sports psychology is a field that we use psychological principles to help athletes optimize their performance. So for example, we use relaxation skills, mindfulness, focus, self talk. Many of those skills are from traditional clinical or counseling psychology that we apply into the sport context to increase the performance. And beyond the performance aspect. There's also the mental health aspect. I'm not a clinical or counseling psychologist. So my title is Certified Mental Performance Consultant, CMPC. In short, mainly focusing on the performance aspect, but there are also some clinical and counseling sports psychologists Then work with athletes mainly focusing on the mental health aspects such as eating disorder, anxiety and depression, and beyond for psychology. Now there's also exercise and performance psychology. So exercise psychology and focus on helping people build a habit for a healthy lifestyle, be motivated to exercise regularly to improve their fitness and health. And their performance psychology will be applied to some other contexts such as the military, music, or even surgeons, you know, now there are people working with surgeons, firefighter, and police officers on handling the stress, you know, in order to help them be more focus and perform better in their context as well.



-  3:53  

That's very interesting. Actually, I don't know there are so many different categories. Sounds like Just like there are sleep psychologists just handle people to sleep disorder, their nutritions to handle the food diets and sounds like there are people really just focus on healthy lifestyle exercise and other type of certain career certain jobs, like people's stress level their performance and you your job possibly mostly for our athletes in in the sports field.



-  4:31  

That's correct. Yeah. So that's my consulting role. As you know, I'm a professor as well. So I my main job is being at the university, teaching sports psychology, also other undergraduate courses, and then doing research on different sports psychology related issues. Although my main focus is on motivation and motivation, in sport, also in general. No, basically Looking at why people do what they do, and why they keep doing it and why they enjoy what they do.



-  5:07  

That's definitely interesting. I definitely want to ask you more about that. But overall when you mentioned athletes and sports motivation it's just to remind me recently there's a lot of attention focused on athletes performance and sleep, like their sleep lens, their sleep quality, how that really interfere with them. So I'm wondering in your work, either research work or your consultant work your practice, whether you see any like issues about sleep among athletes.



-  5:49  

Yea definitely. So I work with many different athletes, from high school, to collegiate athlete and professional athlete on the national team. So when I work with athletes, especially adolescence, why I see quite often is that they are pretty exhausted or they are tired. You know, I asked them how their day is going a lot of time, they will say tired because they have to go to school to practice and they don't get enough sleep. So that's where the sleep pattern comes in, and I think it's particularly, particularly an issue for high school and collegiate athlete because they have school, their early classes, they have to get up early, or sometimes they even need to practice before school starts. So for example, most of the swim, swim and track and field teams, they have early practices, and they also have afternoon practices. So they have their first practice 6am in the morning, and maybe it goes to school during the day, and then they practice again in the evening. So it's a really exhausting a lifestyle for them. Especially, they have to stay up late to either do their homework or maybe just hang out with friends because of their age, being in school and socialize with people in that context. So definitely, sleep plays a role in their athletic performance.



-  7:18  

Yeah, that reminds me of my college life. My first year in college, I studied chemistry, and I played volleyball for the chemistry department and we had to get up like 5am every morning to go to practice. And then, at night we have tons of homework to work on in the chemistry like chemistry classes, so that was, when you mentioned that just remind me of those horrible practicing time



-  7:48  

So 5am in the morning how can we start that early like okay Steve died because I you there early in the morning,



-  7:55  

right especially I'm a little bit night owl, that's even harder for me. I have to say after like, a semester of this kind of schedule, I definitely felt very, very healthy. And even though I had a struggle to get up early and sleep really late, but because of practice the exercise, I definitely felt like, overall, the whole energy level actually was pretty good. But the sleep definitely make me during the daytime, have some, some fatigue, you know, uncomfortable feeling. So I'm more curious about this area. Especially Well, you mentioned this, and also a lot of research, a lot of sleep scientists are talking about right impact of sleep deprivation. And also in our own clinical practice, we talk about insomnia, and sleep and performance are all so I'm wondering for athletes, for example, if they gonna have training like this early morning, or during the daytime, does their sleep really impact them? And how is that like more sleep quality matters or sleep quantity matters?



-  9:18  

I think both quantity and quality play play a role based on what we see in research. You know, I mean, there are times that people can sleep for 10 hours and yet the next day is still feel very exhausted because they don't have good quality sleep or they don't have enough time in the deeper sleep stages and the REM sleep. So I think both quantity and quality play a role. Thinking back when I went with the volleyball team in Texas when I was there for my PhD, I went to the early practices, and it was hard for me to get up and just see them doing volleyball and weight training practices. I can't I can't even imagine how hard it was for them to actually be ready to perform. You know, they're early in the morning. And I did see some differences early morning, they usually felt a little bit more groggy, they didn't have as much energy. And they didn't either maybe intentionally or unintentionally, couldn't put out more effort than they usually do. So I would say that those practices seem a little bit less productive to me, but I understand why the coach wants to do that because I want to push them a little bit more and, and I'm still not sure if I will agree 100% because of the research showing that they look at...



-  10:49  

So today, this actually is a pretty large study, mainly done in Stanford, in that one, one university looking at collegiate athlete. They sleep the first two weeks, the same hours that they usually do. And then so that's the baseline data that they get related to their performance and sleep. And then they sleep six hours. I mean, sorry, I mean six weeks out with two more hours every day. So let's say if normally they sleep for six hours, they sleep six hours for those two weeks, and then they sleep eight hours for the six following week. And the research show that when they sleep that two additional sleep, so called sleep extension strategy, they actually swim faster, or the football athlete they they run faster, their decision making a reaction time is faster, and also tennis player they have better accuracy and perception skills during the post-test study compared to the baseline data.



-  11:55  

Interesting. So for the college athletes, just by consistently sleeping two more hours, or a little bit more than normal every day for several weeks, we can see such an improvement in their, like sports performance across different sports.



-  12:18  

Right, exactly. Yeah, of course it depends on on the specific sample and the study didn't mention that it was only done in one university, on collegiate athlete, and it's quite likely is the issue that we mentioned. They just don't get enough sleep in general. That's why those two hours really help. But let's say if there are athletes who already sleep 10, eight to 10 hours a day, you know, additional sleep may not help but there may be ways that they can improve their quality, maybe being more relaxed before they sleep and try to not think about things that they worry if they sleep to increase the quality of sleep.



-  13:03  

Yeah, that's a very good point. Like I think sounds like athletes needs to really understand what their current sleep look like. Are they lacking sleep depriving themselves they're not sleeping enough because schoolwork because other things because practice the if they are able to manage somehow squeeze in more sleep, it may be helpful, but if they are, they sleep a lot to the sleep hours are fine, then they should possibly consider working on the sleep quality. I like that it definitely makes sense. So, how many hours athletes may need? I'm not sure about the research. Are you aware of any research to recommend anything for college athletes?



-  13:53  

So the general recommendation is about eight hours, maybe eight to nine hours. We'll be ideal definitely not less than six hours. I think that's just a general recommendation. And we show that sleep for athletes can even be longer than the general population. Basically during the day, athletes work out so hard and they tear the muscles, so to speak, you know, when they have to lift leg when they have to run, they have to jump. They're using a lot of muscle in their body that will require even more recovery during their sleep. So it's recommended that they sleep probably a little bit more than the general population are eight or nine hours out there are actually some famous athletes who are also famous for sleeping a lot. So for example, Roger Federer, which is one of my favorite athletes, you know, he he is a sweet tennis player. He's playing for, I think almost 20 years by now. I still play very competitively actively at the age of 38. And one of the strategy that he mentioned why he has such a longevity is that he sleeps 12 hours every day and he broke it down into 10 hours at night and two hours during the day. Kind of like a nap longer than a usual nap every we talked about and then Usain Bolt - pretty sure all the listeners know of him you know the Jamaican sprinter. You know, either will be one of the best sprinter in the world in history. Now, he told the media that he used to sleep about 10 hours a day, every day as well during the during his training. Similar for basketball player, LeBron James, also about twelve hours a day. So it seems the elite athlete sleep even a little bit more than the eight hour recommendation. And sleep to them is a performance because they, they do a little bit different than collegiate athletes in a way that they don't have school, or they don't have other social task as much. So the focus is on only sport and to them sleep is part of the career part of their training as well.



-  16:29  

Yeah, that's very interesting cases to know. Great examples. I'm not aware that athletes they sleep this much, and that makes sense when they can only focus on the sports and they have a lot of say about their own schedule, their training their their rest, I would imagine possibly really hard for college students, college athletes to manage that because they have too many things on their plate. I'm wondering how many hours they are able to sleep. Possibly not a lot?



-  17:03  

Yeah, possibly not a lot in a while I've been hearing maybe about six hours or even less. I think they sleep a little bit more during off-season. So for example, volleyball, they have a fall season. So they practice and compete mainly from August to December. I can't see any of those days they can sleep eight hours or more just because of all the volleyball training and also school at the same time. But in the spring semester, they may be able to sleep more because they have less training during those times.



-  17:40  

Hmm. Okay, that's, that's very sad. Like during the season, they are not able to sleep a lot and even off-season, they possibly still have schoolwork and other things and even a little bit more may not still be as much as what their body needs. And so, so that's like, just training and sounds like we mentioned training and competition. So I'm I'm curious during the competition season like when you mentioned the volleyball teams the fall season. So do athletes normally sleep less, partly because they are busy I guess they have to train, and partly maybe due to anxiety? I'm not sure.



-  18:28  

I would agree. I think most of the time athlete do not relate the two together most of the time, you know, when I asked them how their sleep is going, they said not good because they are tired. They are busy. Either not enough quantity or not enough quality or both. But then when I ask them whether they feel stressed or anxious, they also say yes, but they don't always relate the two, but I definitely see the correlation. They're, you know, when they are busy, they have more stress, they want answers. And then they're also less likely to be able to sleep well at night as well. And anxiety and stress are common issues for normal college students, at least particularly common for athletes who are in season just because they have so much pressure to perform every week during the season.



-  19:28  

Hmm, yeah. Yeah, I would, I would really imagine for athletes in such a highly competitive environment, the handling stress and anxiety possibly pretty hard. And the limited number of athletes I have worked with, feel like or my friends I knew back in school, they are like athletes, I feel like many of them are quiet. style of perfectionist, and they want to do things really, really well. They want to make things perfect. They want to perform the best. They always aim for the goal and just feels like the whole person's quite intense and want everything to be perfect in their life and in their different performance. Just by witnessing that, I just feel very tired for them.



-  20:31  

Yeah, I definitely see right. I think especially in the US. The system in college is very competitive. Different in China, Mainland China or Hong Kong, China. They I grew up, you know, I mean, I was a collegiate table tennis player, but I didn't train as much as a collegiate athlete here. My main job was being in school, mainly perform well in school, and I never had a desire either. Never thought I would become a professional athlete after college. But here are the differences is that so many collegiate athletes, they still wanna get to the next level, be a professional, and they have a lot more structure, practice, training and competition, more so than in China or in Hong Kong or some other Asian countries. So I think in the US, the system make collegiate athlete even more tiring, especially they have to travel all over the country, you know, to the east, to the west, and also timezone differences. This is just really hard to maintain regular sleep schedule for them.



-  21:45  

Right, right. Not only college students because in my clinical work, I work with a lot of teenagers. I feel like for high school, like cheer team and other sports teams, they also sounds like quite I'm quite busy, the like practice several times a week, and they will travel during the weekends to different cities for competitions. It's so sounds like this whole system in America is quite busy and quite fully scheduled. Many of them are anxious and don't have time to socialize with their friends.



-  22:26  

Yeah, school sport in the US is probably the most competitive system in the world. You know, I think many other countries in Europe, Asia, they still have very competitive sport. But then at the youth level, they usually have separate clubs or separate National Training Center. The athlete will go there to train during the day and during the weekend, but they don't do much sport in school. And also if they want to become professionals, they don't even go to college. And, right after high school, they will just train professionally in the National Training Center. So it's very different than the system in the US that the US focus on our college education and collegiate athletics at the same time and that's why those athletes have even more pressure with school and athletics at the same time than other countries.



-  23:28  

Hmm. Right. So for college athletes, especially I know you have a lot of experience working with - any suggestions, any like advice for them, if any of them are listening right now. How to... what they can consider to include in their daily life, to help them manage their stress a little bit better by sleeping more sleeping better.



-  24:00  

I think the first thing I would suggest is just be aware of their sleep, quantity and quality. A good thing to do, maybe just keeping track on how many hours they sleep every day, during the weekday, and during the weekend. Research show us that, and also based on my observation, they tend to sleep a little bit more. during the weekend, they may have a little bit more energy on the weekend, so maybe be aware of the quantity quality of sleep, but also the energy level. So to just check to see, okay, if I sleep seven hours, I feel pretty good. If I sleep six hours, I don't feel good. So if they are aware of their pattern, they are more able to regulate their schedule to make sure they have more sleep. And then they probably do not have 100% control over their sleep. Sleep schedule, their practice schedule. So if they can really sleep a lot at night, what we suggest is to make sure they have at least 20-30 minutes during the day to be in a quiet place to take a nap or even just rest just take 20-30 minutes out of the day to not do anything not checking their phone, putting their phone away and just relax during that moment. And as you probably know quite well that are power nap can help us energy level quite a bit as well. Just like Roger Federer does and every day it will take a nap. Although he takes longer than most people. Even for me, sometimes I will try to take a short nap in my office or at home. Just 10-15 minutes and that will help me with my energy level. If I know that I can't get enough sleep at night. So first, be aware and then second, try to see if they can adjust their sleep schedule. If they can't adjust sleeping at night, you know try to add some time during the day to relax or even take a nap.



-  26:08  

Yes, I like this. So I think self awareness - always big foundations. The first step to understand what our body needs. When I talk about sleep, I always emphasize that sleep is an individual thing everyone needs different hours of sleep different type of sleep. So if like we have to understand our body right as as lead I think they need to understand each of them how many hours sleep like impacts their energy level, like you mentioned, and power nap. Definitely. I agree. I think in Asian culture, there's a lot of nap in the culture in America and feel like it's not so much. Not a lot of people are taking power naps or you know, relax like that in the middle of the day. But personally agree with you, me too, if I take a brief nap, like less than 30 minutes, it can be quite refreshing to resume the work for me too. Mm hmm. Yeah. And yeah, so really like, and also try to simply do more. And like what you said in sleep science. We also recommend people if you need really sleep more, but your schedule is tight. You can always try to go to bed like even 15 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, just by a little bit extension like that, it possibly can help you a lot. And I know a lot of high school right now like in California, especially the governor's adjust, school start time to make a little bit later. Even just like 20 minutes or 30 minutes later of school start time, that can offer a little bit more sleep for the teens. And there are a lot of great cognitive performance all those like outcomes data come from it. So I think if athletes are able to Eastern their sleep either end right before night and in the morning, just by a little bit possibly can be really helpful. That's awesome.



-  28:29  

Right? Yeah, I think you, you mentioned the key for the athlete or adolescents, you know, teenagers at the age, they have to sleep more or they also tend to sleep later and get up later. You know, that's just something biological that we know from research that we have to consider if so, I mentioned some strategy for athletes, but if for coaches administrator who are listening to this podcast, what they may consider is to push back that practices a little bit later. It's not that teenagers are early adults, young adults are lazy, but it, just biologically they need mostly in their developmental stages and they tend to get up a little later based on research and you're definitely right. You know, there are several states doing it now that they push back school. They show better academic performance, even less car accidents for for teenagers, so definitely a good thing to consider.



-  29:33  

Right? Definitely, definitely. And I like what you mentioned the biological part. I know for high school students, which was very age wise, biological wise, very close to college students, young adults, and some psychologists mentioned as we want - my guest on my show before mentioned - to me that a 7am to high school students to this teens are like 4am to adults, so it's really, really early for them for their biology at that age. And getting up super early to practice like 5am to practice in college possibly is like asking adults to get up like two or 3am. So very hard.



-  30:19  

Right? Yeah, one study I saw in Australia, they just look at athlete in general what time they sleep and what time they get up, you know, it showed that they sleep around 11pm and get up around 7:15am. More like the natural sleep pattern that they have. And I think athletes may already get up or sleep earlier than non athlete population because they are tired. They usually stay early at night because they train really hard. So they, they if the practice is 6am by itself, 8am you know, it means They have to get up probably two hours earlier than the metro pattern. And that will definitely influence their performance in athletics and in school, as well. And I imagine for non athletes that need to be a little later, you know, they may get up 8am, or even even a little later as well. I mean, I do remember when I was in high school, many of my friends, myself included, would sleep until maybe 10am in the morning on the weekend, if we can, it was just because we're so tired, going, getting up early, going to school during the day that we just need to catch up on some sleep.



-  31:39  

Right, sleep debt. Yeah, so I really hope the whole system can change to really protect more sleep to to help support athletes to get more sleep somehow, which is so important. Yeah. At the end of the show, I know I did not get to ask you about your research on the motivation, I imagine we possibly have to find another time to really talk about that. I'm very curious about that. So if you want to summarize, like some main findings in the motivation, research you're doing for the audience, just out of curiosity, is there any brief summary you want to share?



-  32:22  

Absolutely. So, the theory that I use is pretty complex, I have many different components. So the theory that I use to investigate motivation is called Self Determination Theory. SDT in short. It was created by Deci and Ryan - Dr. Deci and Dr. Ryan in 1985. But I can talk about that being asked about that theory. So it talks about that motivation, more important is quality, not quantity. What that means is that if we have very measured we have high motivation, we have to think about what the quality of their motivation is. So we have intrinsic motivation, and also different type of extrinsic motivation. So if people are intrinsically motivated, that's the best quality motivation. It's good to have high intrinsic motivation. But if we have high extrinsic motivation, it may not be good. Extrinsic motivation would be, for example, I play sports, because I want to win prize money. I play sports because my parents give me pressure. They make me do it. I play sport because of my parent, not my own will. So those are extrinsic motivation, even though I'm high in those motivation. It's not good for me in the long term, and that's why so many athlete drop out around the age of high school because they play sports maybe for scholarship or for their parents, for other people not for their own enjoyment. And what we talk about in Self Determination Theory is that if we want people to have high intrinsic motivation, we need to fulfill three basic psychological needs. And they are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. So, autonomy will be giving people some choices, or giving people some acknowledgement of what they do. So, for example, if I'm a coach, I'm going to give my athletes some option, maybe let them decide to schedule so that they can sleep a little bit more. Let him decide when they want to practice, let them decide what kind of drills they want to do. So some freedom and choices will be helpful for autonomy and then the second thing is competence. So if I'm a coach, I can help me feel more competent, make them feel they are good at something by encouraging them and focusing on improvement rather than their performance. So as soon as they improve, I praise, rather than only praise them when they win the competition and then understand if they lose, you know, that would not be helpful for competence. And then the last thing I need to mention is relatedness meaning, our sense of connection or sense of belonging, belonging. So, as a coach, what I could do is bring the team together, I was out of practice, we may just go out for a picnic. Of course, it's a little harder to do during the COVID pandemic row, but if things are normal, you know, go out for a picnic. Just have some coffee, chat, some camping, some external activities that bring the team together beyond the athletic context. So that will help foster their sense of belonging. And if they like each other, they are more likely to be more motivated, intrinsically motivated to play sports. So, to summarize, the best motivation is intrinsic motivation, high quality motivation. Extrinsic, not as good. And then if we want people to have high intrinsic motivation, we need to fulfill the autonomy competence, and relatedness - the three basic psychological needs.



-  36:35  

That's great. Yeah, that's, that's very interesting feels like even though it's a theory developed for athletes, but it can be applied to so many areas in our life in general.



-  36:48  

Right. Yeah, and I do have some video or resources that I can share with you. If you, you, I don't really share any resources normally with your listeners. People go to your website, I can definitely share some simple things that they can see - video or some simple articles.



-  37:09  

Yes, definitely I will. Please share with me anything you think it's related to what you talked about today. I can put it on the show notes at deepintosleep.co and people can, our listeners can go there to look at other resources. Okay, great. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Alan, for today for coming to the show, discussing and sharing all this wonderful information with us.



-  37:34  

It's my pleasure. Thank you, Yishan, for having me.



-  37:37  

Yeah, thank you. I will talk to you later.



-  37:39  

I'll talk to you later.



-  37:40  

So if you are athletic yourself, hopefully today's episode gave you some great ideas about how important sleep is to what you do. Dr. Chu also shared some great resources including some sleep tips for athletes. I included in the show notes at deepintosleep.co/episode/045. Welcome to go there and check out more. He also shared with us some videos his department made to explain what is sports psychology, and related topics. If you're interested, you can find those resources in our show notes also. If you are coach and administration level for athletes, hopefully this episode can make you rethink about how to help support athletes, including college and high school athletes to help them get more sleep. Again, I just want to really thank all the audience to keep on listening and supporting our podcast. Hopefully you like my conversation with Dr. Chu and learn something. I am Yishan, and I will see you next week.



www.deepintosleep.co
Dr. Yishan Xusport performance, sport psychology, intrinsic motivation, productivity, insomnia, sleep, mindfulness, meditation, self determination theory, stress, anxiety, stress managementComment