Bill Patton
With the publication of The Athlete Centered Coach, Bill Patton is working hard to influence sports culture globally. There is a revolution going on in coaching, and Bill has always colored outside the lines, so he is ready for new lines to be drawn. He used to take his toys apart to see how they worked. He turned those experiences into a strength. Now he creates innovative templates so that others can build on success and make it their own.
He is most proud of winning an NCS Championship and becoming a published author for the first time. Once when trying to speak another language to a player, he thought he was asking if she was embarrassed, but he used the word for pregnant. That got sorted out later.
Bill Patton is a Tennis Professional and is currently coaching his 10th different high school with 30+ years of experience in the field. He has coached at several schools with many great results. Mainly, the players had a great time maximizing their games and playing on the teams. He is now featured on coachtube.com, with three different tennis courses.
Bill and his business partner Styrling Strother have started USATennisCoach, LLC, which trains, certifies, mentors, and collaborates with high school tennis coaches.
Bill, a Maverick Leader, is co-founder of USATennisCoachl, a Catalyst for Omni Athlete: The Future of Sport, a PTR and MTM Professional.
TAKING CARE OF YOUR SUPERCOMPUTER - PART ONE
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By Bill Patton
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Sleep Is Your Superpower!
Two of the most critical factors that set people over the edge for a heart attack are a bad night of sleep followed by a fatty morning meal, with the most common time for heart attacks: 9:00 AM. What if you and I working in a health industry can not only help our clients avoid this horrific and possibly deadly event, and go completely to the other side of the spectrum toward longer and higher quality of life?
Sleep Is A Legal Performance Enhancing Drug
The factor I want to focus on is sleep. Sleep is perhaps the number one thing you need to do in life. Many great hall of fame caliber athletes including Steph Curry, Usain Bolt, LeBron James, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, and Maria Sharapova report that they get at least 8 hours, and sometimes more than 10 hours. In preparing for a competition some athletes report sleeping 12 or more hours.
It’s Not Brave To Die Early
Im a recent convert to this line of thinking, as somewhere in 2013, I began to wake up at 4am or 5am, and not able to go back to sleep. I explained it away as simply something that happens to a man in his late forties. Then I said all the brave things like “Sleep is for sissies”, and “I will rest when i’m dead, which I didn’t realize that I was bringing earlier than need be. I was often irritable, gained weight, and self medicated to feel better. In doing the research now that I am calling myself a Sports Neuroscientist Specializing in Tennis, I have discovered all the negative effects of lack of sleep, and the relative high performance benefits of getting enough zzzs.
Track Your Sleep
It’s a great idea to use some kind of tech whether a FitBit, Apple Watch, Whoop or some other relatively accurate device to track your sleep. I believe my Apple Watch 3 (I never pay for brand new Apple products), is accurate enough for me, but in the future, when prices come down I will upgrade to a newer model.
Since I started tracking in January, I have gone from 5:46 of sleep per night to 6:24 at my peak, and my goal is to get to 6:30 this month, then 7 hours in future months. There is no very hard rule for how much sleep you need, but 7 hours seems to be minimal. When I have had a short night sleep, I make up for it with a 45 minute nap in the early afternoon. If you can’t nap, then it’s imperative that you sleep well at night.
What Your Brain Does At Night
During light sleep, your brain relaxes your muscles. During REM sleep, it processes the learning from the day, and during deep sleep your brain dumps the toxins built up in the previous 24 hours. You can see how if you don’t get the muscle relaxation, you will be feeling stress. When you don’t get your REM, that thing you are learning becomes a bit more difficult. Finally, failure to dump toxins can lead to brain fog, and leave you in a state of what’s called sleep pressure. Then you will reach for the sugar, the stimulants, and eat more food than you really need. You are on your way to continuing the negative cycle.
So, if you are worthless until you have had your coffee, wake up and smell the sleep. There seems to be direct correlation between how much caffeine you consume and the quality of your dozing. I now have reduced by dosing of coffee from two full french presses, to 2 cups per day, and on a good day, only 1 cup.
How To Sleep Better
* Cut back on caffeine
* Put down the blue screen earlier
* Get your room close to 65 degrees
* Practice deep breathing, prayer or meditation
* Keep a notebook by the bed, so that if you get a recurring thought you can write it down.
* Find your ideal sleep times, (apps can help with this, I use the Pillow app)
* Try not to eat within three hours of bedtime and especially avoid high protein.
* Drink 4 oz of tart cherry juice.
* get a small amount of Magnesium
Well Researched Benefits Of Sleep
* Better acuity
* improved visual decision making
* more competent balance and coordination
* faster verbal processing
* less likely to be involved in an auto accident
* generally improved mood, although not a perfect correlation
If you are a health industry example, and if you are reading this you are, then be sure to be a model of good sleep. Make sleep education a part of staff training, and encourage your clients to sleep well. It can save lives, but even if it doesn’t you easily can improve quality of life and performance for yourself and others.
Dozing, not dosing.
Bill Patton
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