Q:
As a teaching professional, I often find myself going into a midafternoon mental trough. My concentration is low and sometimes I'm even fatigued to the point of being sleepy. I have heard this from other business people as well. Do you have any suggestions?
A: This is something we all go through. Research studies have shown that in time isolation, we establish a 25-hour sleep/awake cycle. One-third of the time we will sleep, but not all at once. We will sleep for about seven hours in one time period and then, at a time corresponding to what would be between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., we would sleep for another hour. So, regardless of one's lifestyle, there is a naturally occurring midafternoon trough in humans' physiological rhythm.
Before I go into certain strategies, let's discuss the issues of sleep for the tennis-teaching professional who is trying to balance the compression of time between the court and family.
Research shows us these facts about sleep habits:
- The younger a person is, the greater the length of sleep required.
- As people get older, the sleep cycle becomes more fragile. Delta sleep (the restorative part of the sleep cycle) decreases with age.
- Delta sleep is high in those who remain active.
- Lean body mass is positively correlated with Delta sleep.
- Fit subjects sleep less than nonfit subjects, but have more Delta sleep.
The following are some tips on how to handle the midafternoon troughs of tiredness. How individual people respond to them depends on their age, physical condition and activity level, and how well they are sleeping at night.
First, teaching professionals should schedule a variety of activities throughout the midday that allow them to go back and forth from stress and recovery. Constant and unrelenting activity (staying on the court for hours at a time) can cause excessive stress. This overtraining phenomenon has been shown to effect the onset of fatigue.
Fun is a key component in avoiding the 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. "blahs." If you are able to laugh a lot with your students and fellow employees, it will help tremendously.
Finally, eating a light, healthy mid afternoon snack (around 3 p.m.) will cause a rise in blood sugar and increase alertness. Eating a bagel, apple or banana will give you approximately 100 to 200 calories to kick-start your engine from a slow idle.
Remember this: The midafternoon trough is part of our cycle as a biological system, and sleep is the most important recovery mechanism you have. These are just a few ways to help you out of those doldrums.
