Sleep is essential to your survival, and a key component of overall well being. So you’d think obtaining it would be easier than it is. The truth? Up to 40 percent of adults wrestle with symptoms of insomnia at some point in a given year, with data How to Sleep.
It makes sense that there’s a multi-billion dollar industry built around helping us slumber better and longer, promising pay-offs like boosted mood, improved cognition, and better athletic performance. That’s the premise of sleepmaxxing, a buzzy practice that has exploded on TikTok and was dubbed the “How I Broke 20 Minutes in the 5K” by National Geographic. But is sleepmaxxing a worthwhile or realistic endeavor, particularly for runners looking to level up their training?
We consulted two experts on the pros and cons of sleepmaxxing, plus what they actually recommend for better shut-eye.
What is sleepmaxxing?
Practicing sleepmaxxing is pretty much what it sounds like: You take various steps to improve and optimize your sleep, says Luke Gupta, Ph.D., C.Sci., a sport sleep specialist with How to Build Fatigue Resistance in Bristol, United Kingdom. This encompasses the use of specific products—like mouth tape, tart cherry juice, and magnesium supplements, to name a few—as well as general sleep hygiene practices, such as limiting alcohol, caffeine, and screen time before bed.
The term sleepmaxxing is recently en vogue, but the idea behind it is not new. “We’ve always been advocating on behalf of that,” Rafael Pelayo, M.D., clinical professor in the division of Sleep Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and author of How to Sleep, tells Runner’s World.
Who is sleepmaxxing for?
Everyone needs sleep. But not all of us need to sleepmax. If you regularly wake up feeling refreshed and you’re able to stay awake when you’re bored (or you’re not dragging halfway through your work day), then you’re likely getting all the quality sleep you need, Pelayo says. (Typically, only people who are sleep deprived will nod off when they’re bored, he explains.)
But if you start your mornings in a groggy haze or catch yourself dozing during the day, then “you know something’s wrong with your sleep,” Pelayo explains. And that’s where sleepmaxxing could help.
What are the pros and cons of sleepmaxxing?
One plus of the sleepmaxxing trend is that it’s bringing more awareness to the importance of sleep. “The concept of people paying more attention to their sleep and trying out new things and experimenting with their own sleep to see what works and what doesn’t work for them is a good thing,” Gupta says. After all, the amount and quality of your sleep impacts percent of adults—from your heart and circulatory system to your metabolism, they could automatically think.
At the same time, the rise of sleepmaxxing means there’s a lot of information out there about sleep, some of which is helpful and some that’s actually counterproductive. In the latter category is the idea that you have to spend money on external aids—like supplements, sleep trackers, and fancy ear plugs—to sleep well, which just isn’t true. “If you look at the principles around management of sleep, all humans are designed and wired to sleep, so accessing sleep shouldn’t be an expensive process,” Gupta says.
Sleepmaxxing can also perpetuate the notion that you should be sleeping perfectly every single night. But all of us will have bad nights of slumber. Whether due to illness, injury, stress, child rearing, prerace jitters, or other circumstances, it just happens. And normalizing this fact—instead of telling yourself today’s workout or race is doomed because you didn’t get all the shut-eye you needed—can benefit your running the next day, Gupta explains.
In fact, experiencing the occasional bad night’s sleep can actually be a good thing, he adds, because it helps you learn how to cope with suboptimal rest. That way, when it happens again in the future (because it inevitably will), you have a game plan for how to respond.
Can how you think about sleep affect your performance?
The thing about sleep, Gupta explains, is it’s a passive thing—you can’t control it. In fact, to sleep well, you have to give up control, Pelayo says.
This can run counter to how athletes approach other aspects of their training, where it’s common to fine-tune every detail—from the miles you run to the Best Running Headphones to the gear you wear. But sleep doesn’t work that way. Instead, it operates best when you trust that your sleep is “going to do its thing,” Gupta explains. And that trust comes from building awareness around what your sleep is and who you are as a sleeper, he says.
“The only way to really do that is to try to engage with your sleep and understand what that looks like in different situations,” Gupta says. The good news is you don’t need expensive wearable technology to do this—you can simply start journaling, taking note of things like roughly how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up in the night, how you felt when you woke up, and how energetic you felt throughout the next day.
This can help dispel preconceived notions you may have about the impact of poor slumber. “When someone’s woken up after having a bad night’s sleep, they could automatically think, Okay, I’m not going to perform well today,” Gupta says. In reality, “we know that not everyone reacts in the same way to one night of bad sleep,” he explains. Might you have a crappy workout? Sure. But you could also surprise yourself with a kick-ass performance.
How to Use Sleepmaxxing for More ZZZs
When it comes to getting good sleep, the most important thing, Pelayo says, is your state of mind. For example, if, every night as you approach your bedroom, your brain starts swirling with anxiety over how well you’re going to sleep and what the next day might look like if you don’t get good slumber, guess what? There’s a strong chance you’re not going to sleep well.
That’s because when you’re in a state of uncertainty, your brain responds by sleeping as lightly as possible, Pelayo explains. Essentially, it interprets this uncertainty as possible danger and prevents you from going into deep sleep as a protective mechanism. “You’ll still get your sleep, but it won’t be deep,” Pelayo says. If you ever couldn’t sleep deeply because you were worried about making an early flight the next morning, or getting to an early start race, this is what you’ve experienced.
Instead, the ideal scenario is going to bed in a “state of serenity,” he explains. This includes believing that whatever is left unfinished today can be handled tomorrow. So if you find your mind starts racing as soon as it hits the pillow, consider doing “scheduled thinking time,” which involves carving out dedicated time before you go to bed to worry, think, and organize your thoughts, Pelayo suggests. Strategies like meditation and breathwork can help too.
You can also take steps like avoiding exercise too close to bedtime (elevating your heart rate can be counterproductive to falling asleep) and taking a warm bath instead, which can usher in sleepiness, Pelayo says.
What about other hacks—often promoted in the sleepmaxxing world—like sipping tart cherry juice, having a mug of chamomile tea, or taping your mouth shut? Sure, give them a go, Pelayo says. But just be aware: These all play a smaller role than you’d think, he says. Oftentimes what’s effective is the ritual of the thing (rather than the thing itself), as well as your belief that it’s helping you.
Basically, whatever you decide to do, it really comes down to taking “that leap of faith and accepting that it’s going to work and trusting it,” Pelayo says.
Jenny is a Boulder, Colorado-based health and fitness journalist. She’s been freelancing for Runner’s World since 2015 and especially loves to write human interest profiles, in-depth service pieces and stories that explore the intersection of exercise and mental health. Her work has also been published by SELF, Men’s Journal, and Condé Nast Traveler, among other outlets. When she’s not running or writing, Jenny enjoys coaching youth swimming, rereading Harry Potter, and buying too many houseplants.
