British Tennis Forum - Celebrating 20 Years!

Harriet is one of the athletes in The Guardian this week, featured in their 'Sleep if you wanna go faster' article (horrible title, but what can you do....)

She claims she goes to bes about 9.30 - 10 pm, doesnt use a sleeptracker (nearly all the other ones featured seem to), but her coach will always ask her first thing how she slept.

Always has a mint tea before going to bed. And likes a bath, with epsom salts.

Wears a silk eye mask as she likes pitch blackness

She likes meditation, but used to do meditation before a match and found it made her 'quite sleepy' for the match (not ideal !)

She has trouble with swelling on planes, and has to wear compression socks.

Jet lag is tricky but she uses 20 min naps during the day to tey and regulate things. And have consistent temperatures (good luck on that one). And eats more on recovery days.

She says she's quite good now at compartmentalising things so doesn't have too much trouble sleeping before a big match.

And also reminds herself that some of her best results are when she's slept the worst (adrenalin takes over, she says)

(Indeed, a lot of the other athletes are now working on the 'sleep accumulation' theory - I could have told them that 20 years ago, if they'd asked ! )