Shut-eye Time

The biggest difference between a professional athlete and an amateur one is that Pros get paid for racing and we pay for racing. :P

A lot of thing differ. But the most significant one is the recovery patterns.

Pro athletes train on their "work day". For them 8 hour workday means 8 hours of training.
We on the other hand, get in a workout between our 8-9-10 hour workday + commute.

This does matter. Significantly.

Roger Federer, sleeps close to 12-14 hours a day. Same goes for Kenyan athletes.

Yes there are products to enhance recovery( and I ain't mean no testosterone ). But the best recovery your body gets is through sleep.

As time passes and you become increasingly competitive.  That's where we begin to prioritize. And that's where sleep loses out.

I am one example. For the past 3 years, majority of my days have gone by on 5 straight hours of sleep. All because I needed to wake up and get my workout in. And I'm not the only one. Anyone who has been serious about getting "better" has done the same.
The love for the sport makes you get up but this love can take you down. As my friend and fellow triathlete, Anubhav Karmarkar says : "There is a difference between being Fit and being Healthy." You can be fit enough to run, but skipping sleep day in and day out is something which will make you unhealthy.

Sleep also has different types :
REM Sleep
Non-REM Sleep

More can be read here. But in a nutshell, REM sleep is the deep sleep where you dream and Non-REM is the light sleep. And getting around 5-6 cycles in your night sleep helps you wake up Fresh.
I know that isn't possible to sleep 14 hours, but getting anywhere between 6.5 to 7.5 hours of sleep would really help speed up your recovery and give your best in the next workout.

Now how do you analyze sleep?

A comprehensive analysis can be provided by your very own Garmin device. This encompasses the Garmin FR920XT, FR15, Fenix3, Vivofit, Vivofit2, Vivoactive, Vivosmart, and the upcoming Epix. 

The sleep tracking can be done automatically based on entering your own sleep times or by following the following steps :

1. Wear the device while sleeping.
2. From the time of day screen, select  to view the activity tracking details.
3. Hold  to view the shortcut menu.
4. Select Start Sleep Mode.
5. When you wake, select ENTER > Yes to exit sleep mode.

Your sleep gets uploaded to your Garmin Connect account. And this is how it looks like :

Analysis as per Light and Deep Sleep

As you can see in the chart there are 3 hours and 17 minutes of Light sleep and 1:28 of Deep Sleep. (I slept too less as you can see).

You can analyze the cycles too, which shows 5 cycles of Non-REM/REM sleep cycles.

Sleep Analysis as per movement

You can check out if you had a night where you were tossing around in the bed.


The Garmin sleep analysis mode gives you power to have a detailed analysis of your sleep, thereby enabling you to modify your sleeping patterns and allowing you to get a good shuteye time.

Analyzing your sleep and listening to your body will give you that missing bit : That lack of recovery will disappear, you’ll be able to give more to every session. 

And that’s where you will bridge the gap between a Pro athlete and yourself.
So, Happy sleeping! :)