By: Chris Gates

A large part of getting good sleep comes from your routine.

Scratch that.

EVERYTHING about getting good sleep comes your routine.

A sleep routine is crucial for transitioning your body from being awake to being asleep, and getting in a good routine requires you to establish good habits. So that’s what we’re diving into in this article.

Let’s put together a routine so that you can get to sleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed and ready to take on each and every day!

For Starters

We talk about routines a ton here at Chris Gates Fitness, and normally we do so through the lens of maximizing your training and nutrition. The reason for this is pretty simple.

Healthy habits lead to a healthy lifestyle.

If you can change your habits from snacking on candy to snacking on fruit, you’re going to have an easy time managing your weight. And if you can establish a fitness routine that you enjoy and can do consistently, it will become part of your lifestyle — achieving your fitness goals will become that much easier.

You get the picture.

Sleep is no different. If you can establish a routine and stick to it over the long term, you’re likely to find that your sleep quality and duration will improve over time. But let’s make one thing clear…

For most people, this is no easy task.

In many ways, we’re not conditioned to do a lot of the things I’m about to outline. The typical American work day, and the stressors that come with it, often throw our days out of whack. The distractions at home continue to make things difficult — between your phone, and your iPad, and your laptop, and the 65-inch flat screen TV in your living room, it’s easy to find things that keep your attention and, in turn, keep you awake.

What we’re about to dive into is going to be rooted in self discipline and consistency, so be prepared for that. But I can assure you that your self discipline and consistency will pay off over time as your sleep improves.

The routine and suggestions that follow involve habits that I put in place to find success with my sleep. I really think these can help you as well. I struggled mightily with my sleep in the past, to the point where I sometimes went several days in a row without sleeping. It took an entire lifestyle shift to get better sleep, but I’m more energized now in my 30’s than I was in my 20’s. I feel healthier, happier, and stronger. My training performance has never been better, and I’m getting more sleep now as a parent than I did when I was single.

With all of that said, let’s dive in!

Routine Part 1: Wake Up

It’s easy to think of a sleep routine as a nighttime routine. You know, the things you do before you go to bed each night. And that’s partly true.

But in all honesty, your sleep routine should start when you wake up in the morning. Here’s what I mean…

Getting to sleep around the same time every night, and waking up around the same time every morning, is going to help condition your body to wake and sleep. This is part of what takes time, but if you can be consistent with wake and sleep times your body will eventually transition to the schedule you impose.

You should wake up on time with purpose.

I know what you’re thinking.

“But Chris, I like to sleep in on the weekends. Are you saying I can’t do that?!”

Well, yes I basically am.

If you set up wake and sleep times that get you in bed and asleep for an adequate amount of time, you shouldn’t need extra sleep on the weekends. You’ll be getting all the sleep you need each and every night.

Get it?

So start your day on time. Do it every day.

What time you wake up is up to you. We’ll define exactly when to go to bed and when to wake up a little farther down in this article when we talk about hitting the sheets.

Routine Part 2: Caffeine & Alcohol

For some of you, this won’t be an issue. Some people don’t like caffeine. Those people most likely also don’t deal with sleep issues.

For the rest of us — and I feel confident that I’m speaking to the majority here — caffeine is a regular part of your day. Every day.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It just needs to be dialed in and controlled so that the caffeine you consume doesn’t negatively impact your body later in the day when you want to go to sleep.

I’ve already outlined a ton of information about caffeine in my guide to caffeine, training, and nutrition. You can head over to that link if you want to learn more. What I’ll do here is summarize some key points.

First and foremost, you should figure out approximately how much caffeine you consume a day. This is important. Understand how many milligrams of caffeine are in each cup of coffee. Understand what chugging a pot means numerically.

I don’t recommend anybody have much more than 300mg a day. For me, that’s two cups of coffee and a pre-workout supplement before I train. For you, it could be any combination of caffeinated items.

Figure out what your intake is, and ideally get it at or under 300mg.

Part of why this is so important is because caffeine has a “half life” of around 5-6 hours. What this means is, approximately 5-6 hours after you have a cup of coffee (really any form of caffeine) you’ll still have half of that caffeine circulating in your blood stream.

For all of the afternoon coffee drinkers, this is a huge problem.

Personally, I’d recommend you cut off your caffeine intake at noon. I would not recommend anything after 2-3 p.m. at the latest, and this would need to be something very minimal.

Research is hazy on when caffeine fully exits the bloodstream. It seems to be pretty individualized. But somewhere between 8-10 hours seems like a safe bet.

So if you cut off your caffeine intake at noon, you’ll certainly be in the clear for a 10 p.m. bedtime.

Set a caffeine cut-off point, and reduce your caffeine intake if necessary. Don’t create unnecessary hurdles for yourself.

And while you’re at it, monitor your alcohol consumption as well. Alcohol is yet another drink that can really negatively impact the quality of your sleep. More than a drink or two is likely to cause problems.

Sometimes, it feels like alcohol can help you wind down so that you fall asleep. Depending on how much alcohol you consume, you may be closer to sedation than you are actual sleep.

I mentioned in my article on five tips to improve your sleep that a 2013 review concluded: “at all dosages, alcohol causes a reduction in sleep onset latency, a more consolidated first half of sleep and an increase in sleep disruption in the second half of sleep.”

You can’t, and shouldn’t, rely on alcohol to get to sleep. And you can’t, and shouldn’t consume too much alcohol close to your bedtime.

Again, don’t create unnecessary hurdles for yourself.

Routine Part 3: Exercise

That’s right, exercise can be extremely beneficial for better sleep!

And better sleep can be extremely beneficial for exercise. Check out my article on the performance impact of sleep on training if you’d like to learn more about the multi-directional relationship between sleep and training.

But overall, you can and should exercise daily. This will help.

There aren’t many restrictions or recommendations on what type of exercise to do, or when to do it. Generally speaking, it might be best to give yourself at least a couple of hours between exercise and sleep, but other than that the world is your oyster in terms of what type of exercise to do and when to get it done.

Just make sure you do it!

Routine Part 4: Power Down

This is one that’s going to be difficult for most people, as our lives tend to revolve around technology.

Whether it be your phone, tablet, computer, or TV, setting a cutoff point for technology is going to be extremely important. This is for a number of reasons.

For starters, most of the media we consume on these devices is counterproductive when it comes to winding down for the day. Oddly enough, watching TV, playing video games, or scrolling through social media is considered “winding down” for a lot of people, but it often creates an opposite — or conflicting — experience.

Let’s start with your phone, because that’s the most readily available at all times. Your phone is where you consume social media, and social media is a platform based around negative feedback. It’s often people shouting back and forth at each other, and the conversations that happen on those platforms tend to elicit some type of response that opposes the calming mood we’re trying to set here. You’re not in control of what you’re going to see each night as you scroll through the timeline.

TV is similar in a lot of cases. I will admit, there are some programs that are easy to watch and can help you wind down, but for every one of those programs are two other programs that are based on horror, mystery, action, or news that will get you all riled up while watching. Again, we’re viewing something that conflicts with better sleep.

Video games are more of the same. Staying up until midnight so you can kill as many people as possible playing Call of Duty is just stupid if you’ve a problem trying to fall asleep.

And all of these examples have you staring at a screen that emits blue light. Blue light has been shown to negatively impact your body’s ability to secrete melatonin and wind down for sleep.

So both emotionally and physiologically, we have regular evening habits that are counterproductive for achieving better sleep.

POWER DOWN.

Set a time each night, ideally around two hours before you lay down to go to sleep, and power down the devices and technology each night.

Read a book. Talk to your family. Stretch. Meditate.

Do things that will truly help you wind down, find calm, and get ready to sleep.

Routine Part 5: Go to Sleep

We’ve finally reached the part you probably thought we were going to touch on at the start of this article: sleep!

When you have the other elements of this routine dialed in, getting to sleep is easy. You simply lay down and go to bed.

Having a pre-bed routine is a good idea here. Simple things like walking upstairs, changing into your PJ’s, brushing your teeth, laying down, turning off the light, saying “good night,” maybe saying a prayer, and closing your eyes are all great and easy to implement.

Ideally, adults should get somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep a night. That seems to be the range that is most beneficial on a regular basis, and if you’re in this range you shouldn’t need to sleep in until noon on the weekends, as we mentioned at the beginning of this article.

So let’s set a set bedtime for each night. Your set bedtime should work in concert with your set wake time. Often your set wake time is determined by when you have to get up for work each morning, so let’s roll with that.

Let’s say you wake up at 6 a.m. each morning so that you can get ready for work, get out the door, and arrive on time. Walk that back eight hours, and you’re looking at a 10 p.m. bedtime.

Those are your sleep and wake times every day. You’ll get eight hours of sleep a night (man, does that sound good, or what?), and there won’t be a dying need to sleep in on the weekends because eight hours is certainly enough for you to feel refreshed and energized each day.

As you go to sleep and wake up at those times each day, your body will transition its sleep cycle to align with those times. Eventually, it will become easy to get to sleep by 10 p.m. because you’ll feel your eyes get heavy, you’ll start yawning, and you’ll feel physically tired.

Don’t ignore those signs that your body is ready for sleep. Don’t stay up watching some stupid show you can just watch on demand tomorrow.

Go to sleep.

A Sample Routine

Time:	Routine:	Notes:
6 a.m.	Wake Up	Wake up at the same time every day.
Noon	Caffeine Cut Off	Have or finish your final caffeinated beverage or supplement around this time each day.
5 p.m.	Exercise	Work is over, so hit the gym, or the trail, or whatever mode of exercise you enjoy.
6:30 p.m.	Dinner Time	Enjoy a protein-packed post-workout meal.
8 p.m.	Power Down	Bedtime is at 10 p.m. so this is when you start to power down the phone, TV, tablet, computer, video games, etc. Opt for a book or good old-fashioned talking.
Also 8 p.m.	Eliminate Alcohol	Having a drink with dinner is perfectly fine. Let’s cut out any alcohol two hours before bed to promote better sleep.
9:30 p.m.	Bedtime Routine	Time to start heading to bed. Get changed, brush your teeth, and do all of the things you need to do before your head hits the pillow.
10 p.m.	Bedtime	Lights off. Head hits the pillow. Close those eyes and go to sleep.

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I hope you found this article helpful! As you can tell, sleep is a really important piece of the overall fitness, nutrition, and wellness routine. If you’re interested in getting some help to put all of these pieces together and build out a really productive routine, that’s what I do! Check out my coaching page and contact me if you’re interested in talking about how we might work together.

Thanks for reading!

CGF!