“Why do you overheat in the night, get disturbed, or find it hard to sleep for 8 hours straight? It’s because it’s not natural to sleep for 8-hour blocks at a time. If you attune yourself a little bit better with knowledge of sleep, then you’re sorted.”
Nick Littlehales is regarded as the leading elite sports sleep coach in world sport.
A leading industry expert with over 30 years’ experience in the world of sleep, sleeping habits, and product design and over 15 years dedicated to elite athletes and professional sport.
A former professional golfer, International Sales & Marketing Director of the Slumberland Group and Chairman of the UK Sleep Council, Nick has conducted many practical and clinical research projects into the varied sleeping habits adopted by the modern-day sleeper and athlete. His unique and passionate techniques, products and proven approach are endorsed by leading professionals in world sport and business.
Nick talks to me about how he became the world’s leading elite sports sleep coach, how he educated the Manchester United and Arsenal football teams on the importance of sleep, and why he wrote his best-selling book Sleep.
In addition, if you listen to the podcast today you can have access to a very special discount code to purchase the book. All you would need to do is email info@sportsleepcoach.co.uk with the code ‘SPACER90’ and they will then provide tan exclusive discount!
“I found myself in the sleep industry working for an international brand, traveling around and watching how everybody slept – I looked into a lot of clinical research and then set up the very first UK sleep council, trying to educate people in sleep. I realised quite quickly that the underlying factor inhibiting people to think about sleep properly is that it’s not a performance criteria. I never came across anyone who took any notice of it in the clinical world for this reason. Simultaneously, I was working long hours as a sales and marketing director and struggling a lot with sleep. I was never getting 8 hours and struggling with recovery, which was ironic as I was technically in the ‘sleep’ industry.”
“If it hadn’t been for Alex Ferguson, I don’t think any other club or any other sport would have answered my letter, or even engaged in the process I was trying to bring about. It is difficult even now trying to engage people in the process, so back then you can imagine how it difficult it was! I really began to get noticed when the media hanging around outside the training ground started to wonder who I was, as I came in and out of the club. When they realised that I was simply some guy talking about sleep, they simply took the word coach and wrote in the papers that ‘Manchester United’s pampered football players have now got a sleep coach’ – So, I became The Sleep Coach! It wasn’t a profession that existed, as nobody did it. From that moment though, I had to become exactly that, and I began to communicate with the players and find a better way to talk to them about sleep.”
“Following this, the next big moment for me was when Arsene Wenger had just started, who had a completely different managerial approach in every sort of way. As the only ‘elite sports sleep coach’, I had to present to Arsenal’s first team squad in a conference room, and coach them for an hour about sleep, recovery, performance and how I could hopefully help them. There were a few people in the team including players such as Thierry Henry and Cesc Fàbregas who took interest and from that particular point, the word went out that someone was doing something like this with Manchester and Arsenal.
Along that route was the European championships in Portugal with the England squad, where we created sleep k
