Listen to plenty of performance gurus, and you'll be simple to think that a nap is a superpower: rather than a quick fix following a bad night’s sleep, but a route to improved recall, improved mood and possibly a faster 5k run time. Premier League footballers do it regularly – as do professional piano players, fighters and high-profile executives. But if you don't have a special sleep space or employment that encourages frequent naps, is it *truly* enough benefits to a quick nap for it to be worth the hassle? Can you find a surefire technique to get to sleep quickly enough? And can you truly ensure you will get up feeling refreshed, instead of groggy?
Understanding The Reasons for Napping
“Experts note three primary motivations for daytime sleep in the adult population,” explains a leading sleep science specialist. “One is known as recovery napping, essentially what you do after experiencing insufficient sleep overnight. Another is pre-emptive sleep, where you are preparing for insufficient sleep coming up, for instance when working graveyard shifts. Finally, there's “hedonic napping”, which simply is about the wish: you have a moment to nap in the daytime, and it's enjoyable to do it.”
The primary task to undertake, then, is to think about your nap motivation. “Naps can be really helpful when night sleeping gets interrupted due to causes outside your control – for example, when you are a parent of a newborn, or recovering after being ill or strenuous activity,” says a sleep specialist. “However, if you’re napping as your nighttime sleep is unstable or broken, that’s often an indicator your body's sleep pressure is not at the level required. In those cases, naps can become a contributing factor, not the solution. Use napping as a short-term solution to address immediate needs – the main goal must always be a strong and predictable sleep at night.”
The Optimal Nap Length
This means that napping ought not to be too extended to affect your sleep at night, and ideally shouldn’t take place post-3 p.m. (depending on when you go to bed in the evening). What's a reasonable length? Guidelines are mixed. In one of the most referenced research on the subject, researchers at Nasa discovered that crew members had improvements of over 50% in alertness and a 34% increase in performance following a nap of 26 minutes (technically, this involved a six-minute long sleep onset time). “I’d suggest using an alarm for 20 to 30 minutes – many individuals doze off in under ten minutes,” says a sleep coach. “There is plenty of advice around regarding the perfect length of time, but that tends to make people feel more anxious above all – and the worst thing one can do when attempting to get to sleep is to be anxious.”
If you’re going to sleep for longer, bypass the 45-60 minute window that promotes sleep grogginess, that spaced-out feeling when you wake. “The science suggests it is preferable to opt for a longer nap of 60 to 90 minutes rather than a mid-length nap,” explains the professor. “45 minutes is long enough to plunge you into a deep sleep stage making it more likely to feel disoriented when you wake up – however, if you nap for a bit longer to an hour or 90 minutes, you will probably to be completing a natural sleep cycle and should wake up feeling more alert. But if you're dozing for an hour and a half, it may impact the quality of your sleep later that night.”
Establishing an Ideal Snooze Setting
When it comes to exact methodologies, recommendations vary. Some experts recommend using the same protocol you use to encourage quality nighttime sleep: a quiet room, a cozy bed and maximum darkness as possible. Others suggest that it's fine to merely snooze on a couch with ambient lighting happens to be around – to avoid that groggy feeling and to maintain your bedroom as the space you associate with *real* sleep. “Sleep is notoriously difficult to will,” notes a sleep coach. “If you don’t have any sleepiness, it is more challenging to get comfortable and essentially instruct yourself to fall asleep. You need some sleep pressure available to start the process to begin with. Personally, I can often snooze in broad daylight and wake up naturally alarm-free, however, what assists most folks is to anticipate an instance that they’re naturally feeling a bit drowsy and calmly ease into sleep.”
Trying different approaches is valuable, and if you have few options – for example, if attempting to fit in a quick nap on a train or in a soundproof office pod – it's acceptable to employ sleep aids. “Coaching professional sportspeople, I recommend that they don’t get used to sleeping in their bed, since they’re going to have|they will
