Listen to enough performance experts, making it tempting to believe that a nap is a powerful tool: more than a quick fix following poor sleep, but a path to improved recall, better spirits and possibly improved athletic performance. Premier League athletes do it regularly – along with musicians, mixed martial artists & business leaders. But if you lack a room for napping or a career that encourages frequent naps, is it *truly* sufficient advantages to a burst of shut-eye for it to be worth the effort? Does there exist a dependable method to fall asleep fast? And can you honestly promise you’ll wake up feeling refreshed, rather than worse?
Exploring The Drive to Snooze
“Experts note three primary motivations for taking a nap in the adult population,” notes a professor of circadian rhythm professor. “Firstly, there's what we call recovery napping, that is the action you take when you’ve had a lack of sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, where you are pre-empting a sleep deficit coming up, for instance during overnight shifts. The third is called “pleasure-based sleep”, which simply boils down to wanting: you have a moment to doze in the afternoon, and it's enjoyable to nap.”
The primary task to consider, then, is to think about your nap motivation. “Daytime sleep can be genuinely useful when nighttime sleep is being disrupted due to causes you cannot change – such as, if you’re a parent of a newborn, or recovering from sickness or heavy physical exertion,” states a sleep specialist. “However, if you’re napping because your nighttime sleep is unstable or broken, that can be a sign your body's sleep pressure is not as strong as it should be. In those cases, napping can become part of the problem, instead of the fix. Use napping for brief periods to address immediate needs – the focus should still be a robust and regular sleep at night.”
The Perfect Nap Duration
This implies that naps shouldn’t be long enough to affect your overnight rest, and ideally shouldn’t take place in the late afternoon (contingent on when you retire overnight). How long is sensible? Advice differs. In one of the most-cited studies regarding daytime sleep, experts discovered that astronauts showed improvements of over 50% in attentiveness plus a 34% rise in performance following a nap of 26 minutes (to be precise, this included an initial six-minute falling asleep phase). “I recommend setting an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – the majority fall asleep in under ten minutes,” explains a sleep expert. “You'll find much advice around regarding the optimal amount of time, yet that often make people feel more worried than anything else – and the worst thing one can do when attempting to get to sleep is worry about it.”
Should you decide to nap for a longer period, avoid the period between 45 and 60 minutes that promotes that sluggish feeling, that spaced-out feeling upon waking. “The science indicates it is preferable to opt for an extended nap of one to one and a half hours rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the expert. “45 minutes is long enough to put you into slow-wave sleep and you’re more likely to feel sluggish when you wake up – however, if you extend it a bit longer to 60 or 90 minutes, you will probably to be on the end a full cycle and will probably wake up feeling more refreshed. But if you're dozing for a long period, it can influence how you sleep later that night.”
Creating an Ideal Snooze Setting
When it comes to precise methods, recommendations vary. Certain specialists suggest adopting similar routines one would use to encourage quality nighttime sleep: a peaceful area, a cozy bed and as much darkness as possible. Others suggest that you should simply nap on the sofa with ambient lighting is available – to prevent sleep inertia and to maintain your bedroom as the space your mind associates with *real* sleep. “Sleep is something really tricky to force,” notes a specialist. “Without any sleepiness, it becomes harder to get comfortable and essentially instruct yourself to go to sleep. There’s got to be a natural inclination there to bring the sleep on in the first place. Personally, I can often nap during the day and naturally wake up without a timer, though, what aids a lot of people is to anticipate a time where they feel naturally feeling a bit drowsy and then simply ease into sleep.”
Experimentation is key, and when your choices are limited – for example, if you’re trying to squeeze in 40 winks on a train or in a work pod – there’s nothing wrong with bringing sleep aids. “In my work with professional sportspeople, I advise that they not rely on napping in bed, as they’re going to have|they will
