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APR 5, 2020
A Good Sleep’s Edge
How Deep & REM Sleep Turn Champions into Legends—and Weekend Warriors into Dark Horses
At 2:07 p.m. on a swampy August Tuesday in Miami, LeBron James reclined beneath blackout curtains in a hotel ballroom the Lakers had commandeered for recovery. A staffer killed the lights; the superstar slipped into a half‑hour of what his performance coach calls “rocket fuel.” He woke, glanced at his WHOOP band, whispered “that’s the one,” and ambled to shoot‑around. Twelve hours later he posted a 38‑point triple‑double and joked that the day’s crucial play was “probably that nap.”¹
Meanwhile, in St. Louis, Greta Schumann—who invoices plumbing supplies by day and tortures herself in HIIT class by night—forgot to plug in her phone, conked out at ten, and overslept. She sprinted through the morning in caffeine‑deprivation panic, yet her lunchtime 5‑K loop felt lighter than any run in months. Greta chalked it up to “hydration.” The real credit belonged to an accidental eighty‑five minutes of deep sleep plus a rare, full REM cycle.
A Multi‑Million‑Dollar Nap
When Roger Federer told The Wall Street Journal he routinely sleeps “eleven to twelve hours a day,” comment sections howled about privilege; Federer countered by pointing to twenty Grand Slam trophies.² Usain Bolt, describing his final world‑record season, said, “Sleep is extremely important to me—I need eight to ten hours to perform.”³ Simone Biles has admitted her nightly nine is non‑negotiable—“or I’m a cranky mess.”⁴
Though their sports diverge wildly, each athlete orbits the same law: growth happens while the world thinks you’re doing nothing. Slow‑wave sleep floods muscle with blood and growth hormone, repairing microscopic tears. Hours later, REM lights the cortex like Times Square, binding newly learned motor skills to old neural maps. Miss either stage and you wake with frayed fibers, sludge in the glymphatic gutters, and a prefrontal cortex that feels like dial‑up internet.
Sleep scientist Matthew Walker, consultant to NBA and Premier‑League clubs, likes to troll strength coaches: “You built a cryo chamber that costs more than your bus, yet your rookies play Xbox until 3 a.m.” The irony, he notes, is that the “unsexy” recovery tool is free and has been alpha‑tested for 200,000 years.
The journal Sleep Health followed 98 recreational runners during marathon prep; those who slept just thirty minutes more—especially in deep sleep—cut finish times by an average of seven minutes.⁵
The best for your baby
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Written by Whitney Brady
Ph.D. Biological Structure University of Washington - Post-doctoral training Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry - Professor University of Washington and University of California San Francisco - Chair Emeritus of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the National Cannabis Industry Association