Get a Good Night’s Sleep

Posted On: 04-21-2026

In the world of performance athletics sleep plays a crucial role.  While understated and often overlooked as a component to success, sleep can go a long way in improving scores, attentiveness to processes, focus and concentration.

There are plenty of studies out in public that provide that sleep improves performance.  One of the most relative to the shooting sports is reaction time.  I have provided in the past that typically the time one has to sort out the target path, speed and trajectory is less than a second.  For most it is between three and seven tenths of a second to pull the trigger before the target gets too far away to have a good shot pattern.  Given that statistic, and perhaps above all, that statistic being alert, and cognizant during an event correlates perfectly with great scores. 

Not getting a good night’s sleep or worse an irregular sleep can adversely impact outcomes, cause a lack of attentiveness to details during the day, poor health, higher risk for injury, slow recovery, poor cognition, poor academics and poor sport performance. 

Other factors revealed in studies show delayed reaction time, impaired learning, memory challenges, poor decision making, impaired coordination, exhaustion, fatigue, and an overall decrease in sport performance. 

So how much sleep is needed?  Youth from 6-12 should get 12 hours of sleep while 13-18 should get 10 hours of sleep.  What we all know though is how difficult that is to achieve.  As an example, youth athletes have considerable demand on their time compared to those not engaged in sports.  Many youths must deal with pre-competition anxiety, might have reduced sleep due to travel requirements, training times, academic requirements, or social engagements. 

Now that we are thinking about sleep let’s consider what helps us fall asleep. 

1. Avoid blue screen time
2. Shower before bed
3. Set some time to chill in the evening – stress free
4. No caffeine or stimulants
5. Improve your bedrooms sleeping quality – Yes CLEAN YOUR ROOM
6. Adapt and keep to a regular bed time

So, let’s think through another benefit of sleep and that is Lucid Dreaming (LD).  What this means is many can and do coordinate dreams.  As an example during a lucid cycle, one might dream (rehearse) their position on station I and their position and movement towards perhaps a hard left target.  In the dream, one might visualize the lead, the trigger pull and follow-through and experience the sight of seeing a target break.  These dreams might cover all types of shot requirements, techniques, and methods to achieve hitting a target.  It is in fact a rehearsal in a dream of what could happen in reality.  Sounds crazy I know, but research shows it does work.  It’s like a mental practice that elicits the correct movements that would be executed during wakefulness.   

For youth athletes a good night’s sleep can create many rewards.  If performance is important and having a competitive edge is important than one should do whatever they can to be at their best during a competition.  If one can avoid fatigue, diminished reaction time, loss of mental clarity, and lowered cognitive function and all they must do is get a good night’s sleep how easy is that!