By Doc | Stronger Personal Training
Let me tell you about one of the worst night(s) sleep I’ve ever had.
Annual fishing trip to Erie. Sixteenth year running with my dad. One of my favorite weeks of the year.
We have to be on the lake before 5am which means waking up before 4:30. Which means going to bed at a reasonable hour. Which is not what happened.
Multiple nightcap attempts. Beds that fit like knickers. Tucking in way past my bedtime. Then up before the sun had the decency to show its face.
My Garmin basically called for an ambulance.
And here’s the thing — I know better. I literally talk about sleep all the time. I coach people through it. I wrote a whole series of emails about it.
And I still blew it.
Not sending you highlight reel, just teaching you the lesson of my F up.
Part One: The Hardest Rule to Follow
Your body loves rhythm. Specifically, your circadian rhythm — the internal clock that tells your body when to release hormones, when to wind down, when to wake up, and when to feel like a functional human being.
When you mess with that clock — late nights, sleeping in on weekends, travel, a fishing trip with terrible sleep hygiene — your body doesn’t just shrug it off. It goes haywire.
Here’s Lesson 1 after Erie:
Go to bed and wake up within thirty minutes of the same time every single night.
You can get away with an hour. But keep it minimal.
This is the one that sends everyone running. “But I like sleeping in on weekends.” I hear you. I love sleeping in. But sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday is quietly destroying your Monday through Friday. You’re essentially giving yourself jet lag twice a week on purpose.
“But what if I’m not sleepy at bedtime?” You can push it slightly to build sleep pressure — that tired feeling that actually gets you to fall asleep. Just don’t sleep in the next morning to compensate or you’re back at square one.
There is such a thing as sleep debt. Get under 7.5 hours and the debt accumulates. A nap pays back some of it but not all. The only real way out is consistent, quality sleep over time.
Take it from the guy who saw rainbow dolphins in Lake Erie (or whatever they call it now).
Part Two: Where You Sleep Matters as Much as How Long
Recently I got bumped from my bed.
Rhett and our baby dog claimed my spot. So I headed to the couch — which is huge and comfortable — only to discover several things I’d forgotten about sleeping somewhere other than my bed.
The couch wasn’t breathable. I’m pretty sure I sweat out a milkshake I had in the third grade. We’d forgotten to drop the house temperature. The cat decided to play solo soccer with a spare Lego at 2am. I left the bathroom light on.
Sleep score? Oof.
My wake up call was a six year old doing a cannonball onto the couch followed by “Dada, you better be wearing underwear.”
Here’s what the environment section actually comes down to:
Temperature. Your body needs to cool down to signal sleep. Keep the room under 68 degrees. This is why sleep is generally better in winter — cooler temps, darker nights. Nina sleeps wrapped like a linen lasagna and I sleep in beach drip. We have fought over the thermostat for years and will continue to do so until one of us leaves.
Darkness. We used to sleep on the ground under the sky. Now we have blackout curtains and sleep masks and light pollution from seventeen devices. The Alaskan Bear Sleep Mask is my personal recommendation. Make it dark.
Air circulation. Both above and below the mattress matters. A room that breathes keeps you from waking up feeling like you’ve been slow-roasted.
Quiet — or white noise. Silence works for some people. Others need white noise to drown out the cat’s 2am soccer match. Figure out which one you are.
No screens — mostly. Here’s my controversial take: I watch TV before bed. Gets my mind off the day. But I don’t watch anything intense — Game of Thrones put me over the edge too many times. And despite what Amazon Shopping tells you, blue light glasses don’t work. Save your money.
Simple triggers. Brushing my teeth in the dark, putting in my retainer, putting on my sleep mask — my body now knows that sequence means it’s time to go. Pick two or three things, do them in the same order every night. Your nervous system will start meeting you halfway.
Part Three: What’s Actually Killing Your Sleep
Here’s something nobody says at dinner parties.
Alcohol is not a sleep aid.
My neighbor summed it up perfectly after a chaotic evening with the kids: “I’m going to have two more of these and then another before bed and get knocked the fudge out.” He didn’t say fudge.
I get it. After a long day, a glass of something takes the edge off and makes falling asleep feel easy. Except it’s not sleep — it’s sedation. There’s a difference.
Real sleep cycles through stages. Alcohol disrupts REM sleep, fragments your sleep architecture, and causes you to wake up in the middle of the night when it metabolizes. You fall asleep faster and sleep worse. Net negative.
Same goes for eating too close to bed. A full stomach means your body is digesting instead of recovering. Give yourself two to three hours between your last substantial meal and sleep.
Stress is the other silent killer. Cortisol — your stress hormone — is supposed to be lowest at night and highest in the morning. Chronic stress inverts this. You’re wired at 11pm and exhausted at 7am. Managing stress isn’t separate from managing sleep. They’re the same conversation.
Part Four: The Wind Down Routine
This is the piece most people skip because it feels soft. It’s not.
Your nervous system doesn’t have an off switch. It has a dimmer. You have to gradually bring the energy down before you can actually rest.
Here’s what wind down actually looks like:
Dim the lights an hour before bed. Bright light tells your body it’s still daytime. Dim light starts the melatonin process. This is free and takes five seconds.
Cool the house down. We covered this. Non-negotiable.
Limit food and drinks unless well tolerated. Chamomile tea is fine. A full bowl of pasta is not.
Step away from the intensity. Work email at 10pm is cortisol. The news at 10pm is cortisol. A gentle show, a book, a conversation with your partner — these are not cortisol.
Create your sequence. Whatever two or three things signal to your body that the day is over — do them in the same order every night. Consistency is the whole point.
The goal is simple: cool the body down, slow the heart rate, limit artificial light, and give your nervous system permission to stop running the day.
Putting It All Together
Here’s the full framework in one place:
Same bedtime every night — within thirty minutes, non-negotiable.
No sleeping in on weekends — I know, I know.
Room under 68 degrees, completely dark, good air circulation.
Alcohol is not your friend at bedtime, no matter how much it feels like one.
Build a wind down sequence and do it the same way every night.
And if all else fails — don’t panic about a bad night. Sleep anxiety makes bad sleep worse. One rough night doesn’t derail you. A pattern of rough nights is worth addressing.
Sleep is not a luxury. It’s the foundation everything else sits on — your training, your nutrition, your mood, your metabolism, your relationships, your ability to function like a human being.
Get it right and everything else gets easier.
If you’ve tried all of this and you’re still not sleeping well — that’s a conversation worth having. Reply and let’s figure out what’s actually going on.
Knocked out cold,
Doc