If I could tell you that I had access an incredibly effective performance enhancer that couldn’t be picked up on any drug test and is completely and utterly free, I’m fairly sure you accuse me of lying.
What about if I then said that you had unlimited access to it too? You’d probably just shake your head and walk away. Well it’s all true. What is this wonder drug? Sleep. That’s what.
Sleep has been called the most potent natural performance enhancer known to humankind. With very good reason. Below we take a brief look at exactly how sleep and athletic performance are linked…
Sleep and training
Getting sufficient rest is vitally important for all of us, athlete or not. It plays a role in just about every single thing we do, The Sleep Advisor team discuss this in great detail. But it’s importance takes on new levels when you start putting your body under unusual amounts of physical strain — like training for a race for instance.
No amount of hours spent on the track or gym will make you into a top athlete if you are not sleeping well. Those hours pumping iron or pedaling furiously are actually doing your body harm, you are tearing muscle fiber down. it's only with sufficient down time that the body is able to repair and reinforce.
Any training regime that clocks up the hours spent in the gym or on the track, without making account for sufficient time to allow the body to repair itself, is doomed to end in failure.
So if you are looking for things to cut out of your schedule to make space for more training don’t you dare thing about cutting your sleep shorter. Dump the girlfriend, quit the day job or cancel your Netflix subscription. But don’t cut out on sleep. If anything you should be sleeping more.
Sleep and motor skill acquisition
When it comes to learning new skilled actions and behaviors such as those needed for athletic success, it has long been thought that practice is the only thing required for improvement. Studies now suggest this view to be too simplistic.
Research now suggests that the brain continues to learn even when the day’s practice session is over. In fact it’s during sleep that night that the brain consolidates any new techniques learnt during the day. Say for instance you’re working on a new tennis swing, it’s during your sleep than the brain replays the action over and over again.
So remember, it's no longer just ‘practice that makes perfect’ when it comes to mastering a new technique. It’s ‘practice, sleep, practice again, makes perfect’. Not quite as catchy I will give you that, but more accurate.
Sleep and performance
The gap between medal winners and also rans (or also-cycled), often involves little more than hundredths of seconds. Sleep has a huge impact on cognitive performance. The difference between winning a race and finishing dead last could be as little as an hour more (or less) in bed.
Don’t believe me? Ok. Just as a thought exercise, try and recall the last time you had a bad night’s sleep. Statistics suggest you won’t have to think too hard on this. Now consider for a moment what your reaction times were like. I bet it took you a good five minutes to even decide what breakfast cereal to have. Now imagine you’re on the starting line waiting for the gun to go off. Yikes!
The impact poor sleep has on reaction times has been compared to the impact alcohol has. And no athlete looking to perform at the highest level would dare turn up to race after a couple of pints. In terms of performance that’s exactly what they’re doing if they turn up after a bad night’s rest.
Sleep and injury
Excelling at your chosen sport is a lot to do with consistency, are you able to get out there week after week and perform at a high level? If the answer is no, it might not be because of a lack of talent but because your body simple can't cope.
Study after study has shown that one of the most reliable predictors of injury in athletes is how well they sleep. It’s quite simple, athletes who got eight or more hours a night have been shown to get injured far less than athletes who sleep less than eight hours.
There seems to be two main reasons for this. The first relates to what we discussed above, our body needs time to repair and prepare, sleep is this time. If we don’t get enough sleep or our sleep is broken then those repairs and preparations aren’t properly carried out. The result is injury.
Training without sufficient sleep is kind of like driving the car out of the garage before the mechanic has put the engine back together and bolted the wheels back on. You might get a little way down the road but it ain’t gonna be pretty!
The second reason for the upturn in injury amongst sleep-deprived athletes relates to cognitive performance. When we’re tired we’re low on energy and our reaction times are significantly impaired. To make up for these shortfalls we overcompensate. We stretch further than we should. Tackle harder than we need to. This overexertion leads to poor technique. Both of which can lead to injury.
If you’re an athlete and you’re trying to work out why you keep getting injured or why your times simply aren't improving as you’d hoped — maybe it’s not your training or your diet that needs altering — but your bedtime. Sweet dreams!
How much planning did you do (or should you do), before launching your new cycling studio?
What research did you complete to understand the difference between successful studios and those that are struggling?
Fitness entrepreneur Callie Bowling has completed an exhaustive planning process in anticipation of opening a new Indoor Cycling Studio in Boise Idaho next fall. Callie interviewed over a dozen studio owners and she shares what's working… what's not and what she sees as the future of boutique Indoor Cycling studios.
This interview is an hour long, and needed to be to record much of what Callie has learned.
If you own a studio, or are considering opening one, I suggest grabbing a pen and paper, find a quiet spot (maybe with a hot tea) and listen to the podcast below in it's entirety, while taking notes – I consider this one of my top five episodes ever, it's that good 🙂
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Update: This episode wasn't showing up in the podcast feed = I republished it and it appears fixed 🙂
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I was originally alerted to Callie Bowling by Amy – she had talked with her and was very impressed by how thorough she was in her business planning and the amount of research she had done via interviews with other studio owners.
So I reached out to Callie about possibly appearing on the show. This was her response 🙂
Let me give you a little background, so you can be thinking of questions on your end:
I have learned quite a bit actually, so much that just when my business plan and financials were all buttoned-up and ready to go – I was literally sitting across the table from my lender – I decided to go back to the drawing board to lay some more ground work (A MUST) and further examine my goals for my business and a smarter implementation strategy solely based on the experiences I obtained from interviewing eight indoor cycling studios across the nation. I learned a lot, the owners of these businesses were extremely generous with their time and the truly sensitive information they were divulging (the scary icky stuff like money)… lol, perhaps it's my degree in Psychology, but I've usually never had a problem getting people to open up around me… it's a double-edged sword 😉
I've learned this “dream” for us who wish to open these studios is always opened with the best intentions and out of a passion for the “sport”; we're all fitness enthusiasts who wanted to bring our passion to our communities and also make a fortune at it! I mean why not, the preliminary financials reflect success, which is a super simple function of attendance… it seems like a no-brainer right!? Get people in the door and become profitable… minimal overhead, no accounts receivables, cash based service industry, no inventory, etc. … the business model is set up for instant success! I'm sure you see I'm being simplistic and sarcastic, because nothing in life is ever that easy, and if it looks easy… take a deeper look, because you're probably missing something 🙂
With that said, there have definitely been some strong and shared commonalities amongst the failures and the successes amongst studio owners that can't be ignored… but, they're probably taboo to talk about so no one ever does, because no one likes to admit they've failed or fallen flat on their face… but, the truth is the truth, and in the same token no wants to invest their life's savings or nest egg into a business that might be doomed from the get-go, so we need to talk about it.
I will say, I don't know what came over me, but I emailed studios in XX, YY, ZZ, BB, NN, RR, and FF (on the podcast I won't disclose which states though to respect and maintain the anonymity of these studios, because in some states there is literally just one studio, so that would probably give it away, and the information they shared is certainly sensitive – we can just accurately say I reached out to studio owners across the nation) and I didn't know what to expect. I was equipped with my generic list of questions, but those soon fell to the wayside and the conversation became personal and very much a theoretical conversation about what it takes to survive as an entrepreneur in our industry and what those basic principles are.
Alas, we can go over all of this & more on the podcast, I'm loaded with info, lol, and honestly I think the things I am ready to touch on will be useful information not just for others in the “pre-startup” phase, but also for any studio owner in general that is perhaps struggling or “hemorrhaging” (as one studio owner stated) and can draw even the smallest parallels in their own business with what I have understood has also been choke holding others.
What do you think!??! 🙂
P.S. Here's the juiciest part… I think I see the future of our industry!!! lol… that may be a bit pompous for me to predict, but I've done a lot of research and there are signs and clues I'd love to cover!
Callie Kelley Bowling
Founder & CEO
CKB Fitness, Inc.
How cool would it be if your insurance company paid for indoor cycling classes?
A national policy of Prescriptive Exercise would be the holy grail* for small studio owners.
Imagine; A new client walks in with her doctor specified exercise regimen for you to “fill”, just like at a pharmacy. As an approved provider, you and your studio would provide the required exercise and then bill the clients insurance company… and not at your normal class rate – at a much higher rate in recognition of your fitness expertise.
A fantasy? Nope**, not if you're near The Wellness Institute in Winnipeg Canada. Doctors there are actually writing detailed prescriptions for exercise. How cool is that?
Doctors at a unique medical facility in Winnipeg are starting to write some unusual prescriptions.
“A lap a day keeps the doctor away” is one of the mottos at the Seven Oaks Wellness Institute (SOWI), a fitness facility attached to the Seven Oaks General Hospital on Leila Avenue, where doctors have started prescribing exercise instead of pills.
Dr. Kevin Saunders is one of the founders of the SOWI and the medical director. He said exercise is an effective treatment for all kinds of illnesses, including hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol and even some forms of cancer.
The facility offers clients a more holistic approach to fitness, helping people from all walks of life to understand what kinds of exercise they should be doing, and what they need to avoid if it puts their health in jeopardy.
You'll note that what Dr. Sanders is targeting with this program are Special Populations of people who would benefit from physical activity. I'm guessing you'd have a little trouble getting a prescription for a USAT Triathlon coach to get you ready for your next Ironman 🙂
What has me most excited here is the potential for prescriptive exercise for people suffering from Parkinson's Disease. It's been shown repeatedly that people of all ages with PD respond well to Indoor Cycling classes. Especially classes that are designed and taught by a Parkinson's Cycling Coach. Indoor Cycling studios already have the necessary tools to conduct this hugely beneficial classes. They're best held around 10:30 – 11:30 in the morning, which is normally a time without a scheduled class
I did some research and found an excellent article here at emedicine.medscape.com that explains in detail what Perscriptive Exercise is (different from physical rehab) and includes a number of areas where exercise is typically prescribed by a physiian.
Background
Exercise prescription commonly refers to the specific plan of fitness-related activities that are designed for a specified purpose, which is often developed by a fitness or rehabilitation specialist for the client or patient. Due to the specific and unique needs and interests of the client/patient, the goal of exercise prescription should be successful integration of exercise principles and behavioral techniques that motivates the participant to be compliant, thus achieving their goals.[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Components of exercise prescription
An exercise prescription generally includes the following specific recommendations:
Type of exercise or activity (eg, walking, swimming, cycling)
Specific workloads (eg, watts, walking speed)
Duration and frequency of the activity or exercise session
Intensity guidelines — Target heart rate (THR) range and estimated rate of perceived exertion (RPE)
Precautions regarding certain orthopedic (or other) concerns or related comments
Note that a properly structured, Power based Indoor Cycling class would easily include all of the stated components.
Consider this simple prescription:
Type of exercise or activity – Indoor Cycling class.
Specific workloads – Below, @ and Above riders observed 4 minute Best Effort PTP Watts or FTP if known
Duration and frequency of the activity or exercise session – 3 x 60 min classes weekly
Intensity guidelines — each 60 class to include: 5 x 5 min intervals @ PTP, 3 x 1 min intervals Above PTP, that remainder of class Below PTP and Above VT1 (staying aerobic) + adequate recovery after each @/Above interval.
Precautions – None
What you'd have is essentially an endurance training program, written by an MD.
Taking this further. If you were to incorporate the rider's performance data capture, from a Display Training system like Performance IQ or Spivi, your doctor could review your progress = make informed recommendations for future exercise prescriptions. Wouldn't that be awesome?
If you can offer any additional information about prescriptive exercise, I'd love to hear from you!
*Yes, I'm aware that many insurance programs offer a discount/rebate for club dues – if you attend a speciaf number of days a month. This is very different.
** I don't know the specifics of Canada's reimbursement system, but I'm looking into it. I have asked for a representative join me on the Podcast to discuss all of this.
I’d like to ask for your help with an extremely important campaign. The campaign is to raise money for pregnant women with metabolic disorders: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low “good” cholesterol, obesity, insulin resistance, and more. These metabolic conditions make it more likely that the moms-to-be will give birth to babies that develop autism.
I specialize in reversing these metabolic disorders through nutrition. I want to help get these pregnant women healthy, so they can give birth to healthy babies that stay healthy. This is significant and worthwhile — and I definitely need your help.
The research linking metabolic disorders in pregnant women and babies that develop autism is new. Researchers are worried that autism will increase due to rising obesity rates nationally, which, of course, impacts pregnant women. No one to my knowledge, however, is targeting the cause of these metabolic conditions at the root level — specifically, the nutrition of the pregnant women.
These metabolic conditions can be completely reversed; I've been helping people reverse metabolic syndrome for 20 years. I would now like to target pregnant women and try to reduce the incidence of autism.
Please help by donating if you can and/or by spreading the word and letting your friends, family and coworkers know about this campaign. Any support they can offer would be greatly appreciated.
I truly believe we can make a difference by reversing a problem that looks as if it will only get worse — unless people like you help to stop it! Thank you for your support and your willingness to help.
Here’s a link that will take you to the Indiegogo site, where you can get more information on this important campaign: ‪http://goo.gl/ouS9NR ‬
Fitness author Pamela Light joins me to discuss her article in the latest IDEA Fitness Journal — Crystal-Clear Cuing for Indoor Cycling. In it, Pamela encourages Instructors to: Be smart about the exertion scale you use to help participants get the best ride.
Excellent Instructors use a system to describe what they expect for performance, and it's usually a combination of what they've learned in certification courses and what they've gleaned through real-world experience. Indoor Cycling teachers often rely on numbers to convey effort. While this is a good idea at face value, there are many variations on a theme.
Listen below to Pamela expand on each of the seven component parts she feels are important to Crystal Clear Cuing!
