Question: I often wake up sweating profusely at night.  I know I don’t sleep enough, but I am busy with family, work, and sport.  I am interested if the sweating at night is any cause for concern? Outside of a bit of daily lethargy, I don’t seem to be impacted in performance.

Answer:

A very short answer to your question is that I believe your compass has reset to the north, off-kilter to the true north.  What do I mean by that? Unlike a blown ACL or a torn hamstring, low-level fatigue can have almost imperceptible impacts, but the accumulation over time suddenly creates woeful underperformance.

I am sure you know the story of boiling a frog.  Put a frog into a pot of boiling water and it leaps out.  Put it into a pot of cold water and heat it slowly, then the frog remains and dies.  A lovely story that is. Joking aside, this is what happens to many people in their performance.  They end up walking around in a fog of fatigue and underperformance, resetting their compass to establishing this low level as the new norm.  They forget what ‘fit n fresh’ is, and just get used to lethargy. I am not surprised you call out red flags, as your system is likely beaten down for long enough that you hardly feel it anymore.  The yawns, lack of attention, poor focus, drop in vigor in training sessions and racing... It all gets muted and foggy.

A sure red flag for you is sweating at night.  It is a system overload and chronic over-stress, unless you happen to be sleeping by the fire, dressed in a bear suit, or wrapped in wool blankets.  

You need to back off before more serious long-term health is impacted.  I would encourage you to grab some blood work to review your status and levels across panels.  Choose a company such as www.athletebloodtest.com -- who provide sports-minded feedback. I would also urge you to prioritize sleeping and your set up.  A cooler and dark environment is optimal. Lean into committing to at least seven plus hours nightly and avoid screen time in the hour or so prior to sleep.  While it might seem like a lot of time, your health is your backbone of performance and you are likely woefully less efficient in this current state than when vibrant.

The night sweats do indeed give me worry, and there couldn’t be a more clear and objective external feedback cue than this for an athlete.  It almost always relates to global under-recovery, whether from a highly committed world-class athlete, or an overly busy time-starved fitness enthusiast.  Stress is stress, and your current approach is not managing total stress load. You are not thriving.

Let’s reverse this trend.

Cheers

Matt