JESSIE: Jeff.
Jeff.
Wake up.
JEFF: What the hell are you doing in my room?
JESSIE: You've got a video you've got to shoot.
JEFF: What are you talking about?
Now?
JESSIE: Yeah, now.
Dude, you said you could always roll out of bed and do these things.
JEFF: I guess you're right.
What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
You know, Jessie's right.
I do think I could roll out of bed and do these videos, but today we're going to actually
talk about bed, and the positions you are in bed, and what you're doing underneath the
sheets.
Get your mind out of the gutter.
I'm actually talking about what you're doing with your own body underneath those sheets
that is absolutely wrecking your body and your workouts.
What you do here is absolutely going to have an impact on what you can even do in here.
Now let's start right off the bat with before you even get into bed.
When you get in bed, guys, there's two things that you want to do.
Number one: you want to stretch your body out.
See, we always talk about the benefits of static stretching, but done at the right time.
We know that static stretching done right before your workout can actually reduce your
strength and your output.
We also know that doing it right before your workout can change the way that your body
moves during your workout.
So we don’t want to do that.
But we don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to make sure that we're staying loose, and
we do that before we go to bed.
Why?
Because when we go to bed, that's when our tissues start to heal themselves overnight,
and they start to shorten overnight.
So you want to make sure that right before bed, your last opportunity to keep them as
long as they're possibly going to be.
The next thing you're going to want to do is adjust the end of the bed.
What am I talking about?
I'm talking about the tightness of your sheets.
This is something that we don’t even realize we do.
We keep the end of our bed tight so when we put our feet in our ankles automatically go
down.
Now we're spending the next eight, nine, ten hours with our ankles down in this plantar
flexed position, which is going to lead to tight calves.
No doubt.
You're spending that much time every, single day.
Well, what happens when you come back into the gym and you try to squat?
If you can't get adequate calf flexibility here, you're not going to get down low enough
– at least not without compensations in your knees and hips.
So one of the biggest things you can do is try to keep your calves loose.
That's by avoiding one of the biggest mistakes we make every, single night by having those
end of the bed sheets too tight.
Next is the type of pillow you're using.
Here, I want to caution you on going for the one that feels the fluffiest, or the most
comfortable, because what you're doing is, you're artificially creating so much flexion
in the back of your neck here, that you're leading to two of the biggest problems we
see in the gym.
The first is called upper-cross syndrome, which is when the shoulders start to round,
our posture starts to adapt this way, and it makes it really hard for us to press, or
do anything up, overhead.
At least with good posture.
What's happening is, a big contributor to that is a tight front of the neck.
That happens by using a pillow too tight, that pushes our head forward, as you can see
here.
Beyond that we know that we can lead ourselves to cervical disc issues by having this constantly
flexed position here, which is something you'd never want to deal with.
Opt for a flatter pillow that puts your head here at a much better alignment, your neck
is in a much more neutral position, and you can even see the difference in the neck muscles.
They actually have a chance here to relax in this position.
Kind of building on that same concept, and how we screw up our shoulders when we sleep
at night, is this next one.
This is really popular.
How many of you out there like to sleep with one hand up, under your head?
If you do you're causing some problems here because internal shoulder rotation is probably
the second most rampant thing going on in our bodies.
It's really, really hard to reverse.
Why?
Because we spend so much time, again, strengthening the internal rotators in the gym, not strengthening
the external rotators – which is a big problem – but more importantly, spending eight,
nine, ten hours at night like this, with our hand under our head like this.
Now, if you look closely, look at what's going on here.
My shoulder is in an internally rotated position because I have my arm, and forearm resting
on top of the pillow, which is now angles upward, and it's up, under my head.
Now if we insist on sleeping this way you can actually do this, but in a different way.
You want to put your arm under the pillow.
You can see the dramatic difference.
The internal rotation is now gone.
You're getting into a flattened position here, which is a better position for your shoulder.
You're not going to adaptably shorten overnight by doing this.
Again, it still gives you the opportunity if the habit of yours is to stay this way,
you're going to be able to do that, just in a better way for your shoulders.
This next one is for you stomach sleepers.
Once again, here you're going to jack up your shoulders.
But you're doing an even better job because you're hitting them both at the same time.
If you lay on your stomach, and you have your hands under your head here, once again, you're
in this internally rotated position of your shoulders – which we know is not going to
be good, especially for that prolonged period of time – but beyond that, look what's happening
down the spine a little bit more, in the low back.
You're causing a lot of tightness and the peraspinal is right in your low back.
And beyond that too, you're jamming your body and your spine into extension for a long period
of time, which is going to cause a lot of problems.
Especially if you have stenosis, or any other condition – which is a narrowing of the
spine.
These are things you can avoid.
You can keep this arm position if you'd like to have them up, behind your head.
But once again, you're going to want to flip over and put them up, behind your head this
way.
We've gone from the internally rotated position, to an externally rotated position, just by
making that one change.
If you fetal position sleepers – which I have to admit, that's me – look what you're
doing to your body.
You're creating a situation where your hip flexors are getting so tight, by literally
being hugged up close to your body, on top of that fact that you probably sat around
a lot during the day at your desk, too.
You are creating, probably, the worst of all scenarios here.
Adaptably shortened hip flexors can create a whole mess of problems.
Most notably, anterior pelvic tilt, which leads to a whole mess of problems in the gym.
I actually did a whole video on anterior pelvic tilt that you're going to want to check out
as well.
The fact is guys, you don’t have to abandon side sleeping.
Here's the good news: if you want to sleep this way you can sleep on your side, you just
can't pull your knees up into your chest.
You want to keep those hip flexors elongated, but you also want to make sure that you're
not causing a stress on the outer hip, by letting the top hip sink down.
So it's easy to fix.
You just throw a pillow between your two knees, and now you can see that everything is in
alignment.
Your hip is right there in alignment with your pelvis, you no longer have that shortening
and tightness in your hip flexors, and again, even up to the top of the body here, you can
see that we're still carrying through with that arm under the pillow to make sure that
the shoulders are in a good position.
As an alternative you could look like a corpse too, if you want.
You can lay right, flat on your back, because we know that here you're going to have none
of the issues.
Of course, remember to loosen up the sheets at the end of the bed so you're not getting
that pull down effect on the ankles, and you want to make sure those hip flexors are nice,
and elongated, and your arms are in whatever position so as not to cause any of these internal
rotation positions of your shoulder.
If you can sleep this way, then this is the best way to always sleep.
But if you can't, you've got that option of laying on your side.
Just make sure you make that one modification with the pillow.
This next one actually starts before you go to bed, but really the important part is what
you do as soon as you wake up.
That is: what are you doing about your hydration?
Now we know a hydrated muscle is going to have a better opportunity to heal, and to
recover, and we want to make sure we're getting hydrated before we go to bed.
But how soon?
If you're the type that drinks a full glass of water right before you go to bed, you've
pretty much just guaranteed yourself one, or two trips to the bathroom.
More importantly, one, or two times that you're waking up, and disrupting your sleep.
You don’t want to do that.
So optimally, if you can get your last glass of water about an hour, or so before you go
to bed so you can have one, last time to go before you hit your head on the pillow; that's
ideal.
But realize, if you're sleeping for eight, nine, or ten hours you're going to be pretty
damn dehydrated.
So as soon as you wake up do what I do.
I literally go and have a glass – it's about 16oz, somewhere between 12oz and 16oz – and
I drink two glasses.
I chug them down every, single morning.
That's the first thing I do.
I want to make sure I do this to jump start my hydration because it's too damned easy
to jump in the shower, do something else, get distracted, and start behind the eight
ball.
You want to make sure that your hydration is on point, right from the get go.
Last, but not least, the most impactful advice I could probably give you is this: get some
damn sleep!
If you want to perform well in the gym then you've got to get some sleep.
Not just because you're going to feel more rested, but you've constantly got his battle
between cortisol and testosterone going on every, single day.
If testosterone wins you're going to be in a better position than you are right now.
If cortisol wins – which it likely is, especially if you're not getting enough sleep – then
you're not going to like the results.
Guys, cortisol will increase if you don’t get enough sleep.
It's been proven.
There's a direct correlation between that, and the more cortisol goes up, the more testosterone
goes down.
So do whatever it takes to make sure that you get enough sleep, and now, hopefully you're
armed with better sleeping positions to avoid some of the adaptive shortening, and some
of the mobility restrictions that can come from not even realizing what you're doing
once you close your eyes at the end of the day.
All right, guys.
I hope you've found this video helpful.
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All right, guys.
I'll see you soon.