It’s 8pm on the 17th of September 1988, in a tall hot tower block in the Seoul Olympic village. The night before his Olympic debut, swimmer James Parrack lies in bed, silently still and is not bothered about sleeping.
“The most important thing is that it didn’t matter. I had worked out that it didn’t matter how much sleep you got.”
For an athlete, sleep is one of the most essential parts of recovery, it lets the mind and body restore and without it can lead to chronic fatigue or burn out during training or during competitions. Unfortunately, sleep often doesn’t come easily during periods of intense anxiety and anticipation, and race day is certainly not an exception. Swimming sleep deprived in a competition like the Olympics is a terrifying concept, so what James believes saved him from sleepless nights before events is rest and relaxation.
“What was important was how much rest you got and how effective that rest was. One of the things I got very good at was relaxing. I got a book on how to relax the body and I’d go through these tension relaxation exercises through the muscle groups.”
“It taught me what a tense muscle feels like and, in contrast, what a relaxed muscle feels like. And as you went round the body, after three months, you got very quick at just commanding the body to go into a deep, relaxed state. And that was as good as sleep.”
Saving energy is vital during athletes training cycles, having enough to sustain multiple pool and gym sessions a day means balancing with a lot of rest. James credits this to napping. He said napping is often misunderstood as getting under the covers to go to sleep, which can sometimes lead to frustration and tossing and turning if sleep doesn’t come. James says you can nap anywhere, “A nap isn’t sleeping it’s about going into quite a deeper state of relaxation and switching off, you don’t need to sleep. The goal is to do simple breathing exercises for 20 or 40 minutes and come back feeling refreshed. Anyone can do it.”
In the run up to big race days, such as the Auckland Commonwealth Games where James received silver in the 100m breaststroke, he credits napping as part of the mental preparation. “I started to do visualisation exercises, thinking through the race, thinking through what you’re going to do. It works best when you’re relaxed. Visualising walking to the block, listening to the crowd and really immersing yourself in that experience and then running the film of how you want to perform. It’s incredibly powerful.”
James used these relaxation skills and napping during all his training throughout his career so with the techniques seemingly mastered during the run up to the olympics, the fear of failing to achieve on the day would surely be eliminated. James says: “The Olympics is the worst place to perform. It’s an absolute disaster. It’s all your childhood dreams, and you’re there. There’s 24 hour noise. The time zones were all over the place and you’re jetlagged.”
The night before his 100m breaststroke race at the olympics, James said that when 8:30 pm came and he started thinking about going to bed as he was up at 5:30am the next morning, reflecting, he said: “There is no way you’re sleeping. You just don’t. So you just rest and wait and know that it will come. It’ll be fine. Just rest as much as you can. Keep your eyes closed, control your breathing, rest, and if sleep comes, it comes. And if it doesn’t, that’s okay.”
“But honestly, it’s the waiting that kills you.”
After the long awaited event is over, what next? Your pride and adrenaline pumping overtime… and then that’s it. The four year cycle finished. James says: “It’s a long time to wait for one event. So after you’re exhausted, but, you’re then free.”
“So we just didn’t. We didn’t sleep. Who cares when you sleep?” After such regimented sleep schedules and extreme resting programmes, the idea of conserving energy seemed clearly out the window. “You just slept whenever in that Olympic Games, we were in this bubble. It’s like you’d been in a casino with no idea of time. Sleep is just whenever you can get some . And if you don’t get much, that’s fine.”
Since prioritising sleep his whole life, where does a good night’s kip land on the list. James says that since having kids and starting a family: “I’ve slept like shit for the past 20 years, life just gets in the way”.
“But I still nap, taking that 20 or 40 minutes just to sit in a chair and breathe and relax means I never get exhausted.”
James said to Doze that readers can and should transfer this mindset into their own lives. Rest is often just as valuable as sleep, and when sleep just simply doesn’t come all there is to do is lie still and breathe deep. Just the same as he did in that tall hot tower block in the Seoul olympic village.
