The Narcoleptic Dunker
Sleep has always been a hot button topic for me. I don’t know that I have ever had good sleep habits. From the moment I discovered that at 10:20 PM I could watch sports highlights on the local news I was up every night. After the news concluded, I was in bed reading The Hobbit (or insert other Sci-Fi/Fantasy book here). From the age of 12 on there were few nights I was in bed before 12 AM.
At college things got worse. If there was no scheduled events the coming morning, I was regularly up until 4 AM with my roommates. Late night hang outs and video game sessions were not uncommon at my stone-cold sober college (Brigham Young University).
I saw some improvement when I decided it was in my best interest to start taking early morning jobs. I found myself very motivated to wake up if I knew I had to be at work by 7 AM (thank you Ancestry.com). It also gave me a solid justification to leave social gatherings with enough time to get to sleep.
Nevertheless, around my junior year of college I noticed that even when getting a full-night’s sleep I was falling asleep in work meetings. I would be sitting down talking with someone, and falling asleep as we spoke. I could NOT stay awake while sitting working on projects.
I felt pretty good about my work overall but decided I may want to see if there was help available for my sleep problems. Maybe I had a sleep disorder? A few tests later and -zing! I am diagnosed with narcolepsy.
I’m not THAT tired
As I began my jump training, sleep was still something that was difficult for me. I was working 10 hour days, commuting an additional 2 hours, working out for 1-2 hours, and then spending time with my family for an additional 2-4 hours each day. That means I was usually only getting 6-7 hours of sleep maximum each night! Yikes!
I convinced myself it was okay though, and some of the ultra masculine athletes I admire were people I could look to in order to justify my lack of sleep. I remember hearing Jocko Willink say, “I sleep most nights.” I remember Cameron Haines talking about working a full-time job and getting out of the front door before 4 AM every day. I imagined David Goggins, would say, “Stop listening to your inner b*tch, it’s YOU against YOU.”
Yet, the jump trainers I ran into suggested that sleep and proper recovery was ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY in order to jump higher. Who was right?
Sleep Experiment
I have somehow functioned on what most researchers would consider suboptimal sleep for quite some time. After doing so for such a long time, I wanted to believe that it’s just a matter of mind over will. “I can get minimal sleep as long as I am consistent. Andrew Huberman said it so it must be true.” The research of Cheri Mah has me feeling otherwise.
Cheri Mah, MD, is a sleep doctor who conducted research at Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco. Her research papers have titles such as, “The effects of sleep extension on the athletic performance of collegiate basketball players”, and “The impact of circadian misalignment on athletic performance in professional football players”. What happened when Cheri Mah took college basketball players that were sleeping an average of 6 hours 40 minutes a night and extended their sleep to an average of 8 hours 27 minutes? The results were too dramatic for me to ignore.
At the onset of the study, Mah and Co. measured reaction times, sprint times, free throw accuracy, and three point accuracy. ALL FOUR OF THESE OUTCOMES IMPROVED SIGNIFICANTLY. Free throw accuracy increased by 9%! Three point accuracy increased by 9%! Reaction times went up by 12%! Sprint times increased by 4%! Those are incredible outcomes! Someone who shoots 25% from three and then improves to 34% changes from being the guy to leave open on the three point line to a real threat! My skeptic wonders, was it really the sleep or did they just naturally get better as they practiced during the season?
In a recent interview1, Cheri responded to this critique:
“You can almost make the argument too that sometimes as the season goes on athletes get more fatigued, more tired, and that can be actually a decrement to how they’ll perform. So when we see the benefits come down the road as the season potentially gets even longer that is at least some suggestion that the intervention of sleep…was at least associated with these performance outcomes.”
Were they just improving or was the sleep enhancing the improvement? My guess would be that it some of both. They are improving from practice, but it is being enhanced/reinforced by getting adequate sleep. That sleep helps improve muscle recovery, and reinforces neural pathways necessary for the motor learning of sport.
Okay, Cheri you convinced me, I need to start up my own personal sleep experiment.
The Results so Far
Even before coming upon the research of Cheri, I had a feeling it would be important to improve my sleep. I have been journaling how much sleep I get for 17 weeks (almost). The (imperfect) results look as follows:
I am averaging about 6 hours 43 minutes per night. That is certainly less than the recommended 7 hours, and I imagine I have accumulated a hefty “sleep debt” over the years. So how do I get more sleep?
I honestly don’t see it being practical right now to get more than 8 hours of sleep. Work, plus my commute, plus gym time, plus family time just feels like too much to get a full 8 hours. However, I think my best bet is to start with a modest increase to 7 hours. I just want to increase my average by 15 minutes.
My hope is that by making that small increase AND making an effort to improve the quality of my sleep, I can get feeling better and jumping OUT OF THE GYM!
Training Update
It has been a hectic few weeks since I last checked in. I am on a load management cycle where I have tendon pain-guided jump sessions on Mondays and Thursdays, followed up by low-rep lift sessions on Tuesdays and Fridays. I almost doing shoulder rehab 4 days a week.
I am still jumping HIGH AS EVER, getting my wrist to the rim on my best jumps. Last week I was EXTREMELY close to two milestones: dunking off the dribble, and dunking my first self lob!
In addition to my jump milestones my family just bought our first home! (**Hooray you did it! Millennials CAN buy houses without money from their parents! It’s a miracle!**) That has made things chaotic, and we still have lot of things to unpack, and a lot of work to do (#100YearOldHome). Regardless, we feel extremely fortunate to have a place to call our own. We have a new home base for Project Self-Lob Dunk and Project Two-Hand Dunk!
Those projects may have short detours for the time being- my tendon pain peaked at a 5/10 this past week when trying to go through a jump session, and I need to patiently work that pain level down so that we can get back on the 100% grind! My shoulders are seeing slow progress, and I think we will see the same for my patellar tendon. Let’s get it! Happy jumping everyone!
P.S. You should check out the Dunk Camp 2024 Recap video (I make two cameos. The first person to say the timestamps for my cameos in the Substack comments (not the Youtube comment section) will get a free copy of my upcoming book, “First Dunk at 30”!)