← What Are You Made Of?
What Are You Made Of?
Redefining Sleep and Performance: The Journey of Elite Coach Nick Littlehales
00:44:14
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the what are you made of? Podcast. We're in that one studio, or at least I am. I have Nick Littlehales with me. Nick, what's going on, man? Great to have you here today.
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B
Oh, yeah, it's great to meet you. We've had some chats along the route, but it's. It's good fun. We like doing these things, don't we? Having a good, relaxed conversation about life.
- [00:19]
A
Absolutely, man. I'm always interested in how people got to where they are and what they went through and overcame. And, you know, I always say this. The funny thing is we've all overcame everything that we've ever been through. So.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. So that this conversation always is interesting to me. I'm a big documentary buff, too, and so I'm. I'm interested in people's documentaries, so. So, yeah, I like to start with the. The first question we always start with is, what are you made of, Nick?
- [00:49]
B
I'm. I'm emotional. I'm vulnerable. I think one of my strongest qualities and one of my strongest weaknesses is being very empathetic. I care about people. I'm a sort of family man type of thing. I've always felt that, you know, give somebody a hug, shake the hand, tell them they're okay, it's all fine. But probably, you know, like most people, inside of who I really am, I'm probably scared and. And chasing those little moments, but. But overall, I think I'm strong, I'm ambitious, I'm opinionated, and I don't suffer falls that easily.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I'm a Virgo, if you like those star sign things. But I think it's been one of those things over my life that, you know, whether you think of star signs and fate and all that sort of stuff. But I've met a lot of Virgos who are exactly the same as me, so I. I assume there's some correlation with that.
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A
Yeah, Yeah. I. I don't know how much that's it. I have to say the same things. From my experience, it seems like people that are born in the similar months, they. They seem really similar. There's a lot of similarities. And so some people don't believe in that stuff, and that's up to them. But I have to ask you this, though. What do you think it is that you fear?
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B
What? What fear?
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A
Because you mentioned fear, and I'm curious. What do you think it is?
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B
Ah, wow. You can try and answer these questions. Very spontaneous, or I. Think probably I fear that I'll never get over Some of the things that happen in my early life.
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A
Gotcha. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. And what was your early life like? What kind of things have you gone through?
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B
I think a lot of things it's about parents and brothers and siblings and sisters and those formative growth years and stuff like that and things that happen and things that. But I think he's just trying to put those in a place where they don't. They don't play a part in your life where you are now because, you know, so there are a few little things that just keep cropping up. It's predominantly, you know, that mother syndrome probably for a lot of it. But I suppose the fear that that is. That is always going to play a part in everything I do.
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A
Yeah.
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B
However much I try to get rid of this, you know, the chip on the should you're a failure, you'll never succeed. That sort of type of thing that's always going on in the background. I suppose it's. It's not. It's sort of. I suppose it is a fear that you'll never be able to get rid of it. It's just part of you. So I think I've been really trying over the years to sort of just come to terms with. Have a little box for it. Mike.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And shove it in the box and go. You can't come out and pad. Unlock it and shove it away and. And just, you know, revisit it every now and again and say. Well, but that's it really. I suppose I. I don't want to be. It's a really good question. I Not really answering it, but good.
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A
It's a good one to explore when you're on your. You know, when you're by yourself sometime you have some time, quiet, peace. It's a good one to explore. I'm going to share this with you. I came from a lot of brokenness growing up. I actually, I actually wrote a book called Rocket Fuel Convert. Setbacks Become unstoppable.
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B
Okay.
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A
And one of the things I figured out at a young age subconsciously, but it came to me later on, once I hit 40ish, was I was doing something with all this stuff that would happen that from the outside people would look at and say, man, that was terrible. You were treated horrible. You were abused, you were around brokenness. I was doing something and I. I was able to codify it that I was taking everything that came my way and storing it in my tank instead of my trunk. Because I found that most people store things in their Trunk. And when you store it in your trunk, it slows you down, weighs you down, maybe even stops you. But if you store it in your tank, you can convert it into rocket fuel and become unstoppable to live in the life you were designed for. And once I realized that I was. It was on. And I was like. Because to me, there's lessons in all of that. I was called pathetic as a kid by my stepmother. You're pathetic. And I didn't even know Nick. I didn't even know what the definition was.
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B
We have the same mother.
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A
She may be. I didn't even know what the definition of pathetic was. But the way she said it was.
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B
Sounds horrible.
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A
Yeah. And so the thing I came up with, and this might help too, and this is for the audience as well, I. I talk about this a lot. I. I came up with this thing young, at a young age. I guess it was divine because I don't know where it came from. I would always say, am I? And I would question it, not just accept it, am I? And then as I went in schools and moved around a lot, the kids would, you know, think how kids are. Am I? I wouldn't have to say it out loud to them. I would just say to myself, am I? And then I would say, no, I'm not. You know, so that these little things I figured out, and it helped me become a performance expert in life with adding to, you know, other people's lives with it. But thank you for sharing that because, you know, I think a lot of people live in fear. And maybe not that we're not going to live up to what we know we're designed for, but based on what I know about you, and we're going to get into it, you've done some amazing things and you're impacting this world or I wouldn't had you on the show.
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B
So goodbye, Mom.
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A
That's right. That's right. Yeah.
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B
So.
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A
So you mentioned put it in a trunk and lock it away. Put it in a tank instead and convert. So. But yeah, so you're an expert in the sleep category. And how did that all come about? What's the story behind that?
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B
I was just a very enthusiastic teenager at school, all about sports. I like studying. I liked the educational process, but I'd rather be out on the field. So that was my problem. I desperately tried to get into any sport I possibly could. You know, I'd done a lot of different things, so. But then I was a professional golfer for around five years when I was very young. In my early, early teens, just because it was a sport, you know, but back then it wasn't a sport, you know, it was, it was a completely different era. You, we're Talking the late 70s, early.
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A
80S or the clubs, the clubs that you used back then. Oh my goodness.
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B
It was, it was kind of, it wasn't really a sport, you know, it's just a retirement activity. Yeah, but it was sport, it was, you know, it was coaching people, it was hitting thousands of balls every day. It was trying to find out all these little things about how to play the game and how to do that stuff. Complete dedication, you know, up at 5 o' clock in the morning and practicing and you're still there at 12 o' clock at night because you're trying to live that dream. So while it wasn't sort of that big sport anyway, in all around that I sort of, I won't use the word failed, but, you know, I wanted to be a professional golfer, a professional sports person. And that didn't come about. I put five years into it. And so I just decided to marry my childhood sweetheart. And that, that was important, you know, it was important to me at the time because she meant a hell of a lot to me and a lot to my life. So there was the one thing on the one side and then there was that. But that took me into what's called a furniture industry. You know, furniture, sofas, this and all that sort of stuff. And because that was her family business, so I kind of got involved with a family business, you know, and as I went through that sort of journey of we got married, we had our first child. That's a scary process when you're sort of 24 years old. And it was all about chasing the money, you know, because it was paying mortgages, it was buying diapers, it was, it was all that sort of stuff. But I was, I was in an industry that I just didn't fit with, you know, but you make it work. You have to make it work. So a lot of things I learned being inside of the golf area, basically like a young kid coaching people who were way, you know, there were CEOs of companies, they were, they used to play golf in collar and tie. They, they were professionals, lawyers, doctors, solicitors, all this. But that the way when they came to the golf club, they were trying to escape from all the stuff they normally do and just play golf on the grass. So I, I sort of found a way to help them enjoy that better with little techniques. And I used to practice all the Time. So I took that into the furniture industry and, and, and basically just sort of challenged everything they did because it was a real sort of. It was sort of like, well, why are we doing it like this? Why are we doing it like that? That's a waste of time. So that sort of culminated is. I set up the first UK Sleep Council. I was the chairman of that, because we never had one, something that represented sleep. I became a very young international sales and marketing director for a very big company worldwide, and I was part of all of that sort of stuff. And I had the fancy cars and the fancy salary and we were a very big brand, so I could be innovative. So I. I created some of the most innovative things in the sort of industry of sleep that's ever been done. But I hit, you know, number 40. And in my early 40s, I just realized, you know, it's a classic midlife crisis, I should get a Harley Davidson and, you know, go off surfing and do all of those wonderful things. But I just started to leave all that behind and to start my own business. And it was right at that particular moment, through complete coincidence, that a few things happened. And I ended up, you know, in conversation with one of the biggest clubs on the planet called Manchester United. And. And so all of those little things from the early days of coaching people a lot older than me and all those skills and going into an area that you didn't like, you didn't have any relationship with, but you tried to do this, you should have, oh, it's about time I did something different. But at that moment in time, I did not know what doing something different meant. I was simply going to leave my director's job and work my contract out and go off and open my own little shop doing something. And I never thought that would be bumping into, you know, down the road. There was a football club called Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson. We were sat there having a, you know, glass of water, probably a glass of wine, to be honest, having a little chat at some sort of event, and bingo, I became a sleep coach.
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A
Wait a minute. So, all right, so you ran into him maybe at an event, a restaurant, a pub. And how did it go from a conversation to him offering you an opportunity?
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B
Well, when I decided to leave my. My role as an international sales and marketing director, my UK office was in the northwest of the uk, in a place called Oldham. Manchester is just down the road. And we had a local football club called Oldham Athletic. And they came knocking on the door. So I'm in my, you Know my garden, leave as a Director, I've got 12 months to do. I can't leave, I can't go anywhere and I'm just mucking about. But they knocked on the door, said, we want to. Would you sponsor the football club? And what's that got to do with, you know, sleep and beds and mattresses and all that sort of stuff? Absolutely nothing. However, the. The workforce in the factory, Mike, right, they were all Oldham Athletic football fans. So all the guys and girls in the factory who are making all these products who live locally, and they were all older mathematic fans. So I just thought, well, why not? Because if we can put the company's name on the Oldham Athletic shirts, this is way before sponsorship of shirts ever came in. Now, it's crazy, but if we could put the company's name on their shirts and the kids buy the shirts and they've got their mom works at that company and dad works at that company and that'd be amazing. So I did it. So that meant I was invited along to events where it was about football, right, at the old Mathletic Club and the chairman and things like that. And this is Nick, who writes the checkout, who sponsors the shirts and everything else. And he works for this company, G. Well, what I didn't understand and hadn't even thought about is that most of the Manchester United players of a very specific era called the class of 92 and the 90s, a lot of those players came from these small clubs, so they're like homegrown. And then Manchester United would take them on and play for Manchester United. So Alex Ferguson just happened to be sat at one of these events where I was there as a sponsor of the local football club. And he was there because he's keeping an eye on the players, he's reading in the background and that's. That's. So, of course he goes, you know, hi. You know, and I go, hi. What do you do? Well, I'm at this. And. And so I. I was just always intrigued, you know, sleep counsel this sleep is important, but nobody takes it. Everybody takes it for granted. I couldn't get any definitive approach from all the professionals ever live with. So it was all this sort of BS around sleep and nobody's got anything different. So I sort of, you know, what do you do? Do you do anything in the area of sleep in football? And he said, no. So I said, well, wow, why not? You know, this is a massive old chunk of everybody's day. There must be something in there that we could you know, manipulate out of that 30% of every day, we could bring that in and try and make performance a little bit better, you know, whatever it is, from a pillow to a mattress to a, you know, something else more significant. And he went, wow. Okay. And it was right at those early days of certain managers in sports, and there was one or two at that time, but Alex was right at the front of it, who went, if I don't know anything about that, I want to know about it.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So we just started talking then. And so in those very early days, you know, right place, right time, right thing. But I sort of agree with those things. But I also believe that, you know, if you practice and practice and practice, if you believe in what you're doing or what you're thinking or your philosophy about life, these moments will occur. All it is is, do you take advantage of them? And I just thought, wow, this is my opportunity to get into. I've been stuck in this furniture industry for ages and sleeping on. But here I am talking to a football club, and I'm an Aston Villa fan. I have no relationship with this club whatsoever, but I can go and talk to physios and the manager and go and see the players and. Wow. So I kind of suddenly had to very quickly rush off into the cupboard, bring out my new clothes and wander off down the road and become. I'm now talking to this club about sleep. The sort of narrative started as like, well, you can't talk to them about that. You can't talk to them about that. You can't talk. But what happened? What about. If you talk to him about this or whatever, you talk to them about that. And so it's completely fascinating that, you know, completely by default, we were just talking about sleep and performance, mentally and physically, and lots of other things which, you know all about circadian rhythms and chronotypes and cycles and stuff, and Adenison and da, da, da, da. We know all about it. We've all read Matthew Walker's book. We know everything about sleep now. But back then, you might have been. I might as well have been talking Arabic because it's. It just had, you know, what on earth are we talking about? Yeah, so it was amazing. But I think the. The, you know, probably best answer to the question when you asked me before at the start of this is, is I didn't run away from that opportunity. It wasn't even an opportunity. It was just a moment in time. I thought, I'm going in there, I'm gonna dive in there. I'M gonna see where it takes me because that's. That sounds like a great deal of fun.
- [20:43]
A
Yeah. You know. Well, here's the thing. So a lot of times when we get these things to happen and we take advantage of the opportunity to present ourselves, you get the answer that you maybe not necessarily were expecting, like, who am I to work for Manchester United? He says, and then he brings you in. Did you have an oh, crap moment? Like, oh, like. He said, yeah, okay, now I have to really fulfill now. Did you have that moment?
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B
Kind of. But it was. It was more just like a conversation. It was just like, so this sleep thing, you know. Yeah. Well, what should we look at? Well, we could look at that area. We could look at this area. We could look at that area. All right, well, should we have a go then? Yeah. Okay, let's have a go. Now it's kind of like, do you know what you're doing, Nick?
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A
Right.
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B
He couldn't ask that question because nobody was doing this, Right? So it's not like, oh, you know, that guy's amazing at this or that organization. It was just a complete sort of, you know, a conversation that just had nowhere to go because there was no sleep coaches. There was no people talking about sleep. There was no nothing. So it was kind of like, should we go into that space and have a look? I said, okay, I'll go in and have a look. And so he goes, well, I'll give you freedom to go and have a look. So I wander down, I have a look around, I pick a few things up. Well, that's interesting. You know, why are we working on this particular player every day wrapping in cotton wool? Because of a back problem? Has anybody been to his home and looked at what he's sleeping on or who he's sleeping with or anything? No, of course we don't. They go home. They come in for training. They go home in their Ferraris and go back to their mansions. I said, well, let me go and have a look. So I go and have a look, and you have a look at this. And I come back and say, we should. We could change that and change that and change that and go, really? Okay, let's do it. And then the physio turns around to me and goes, do you realize we've just said We've just saved £50,000 on redesigning the coach for this player? He started training again. His wife has rung up and said, what have you done to my husband? Because he. He seems to be amazing. And all we did was, you Know, put a little topper on his mattress and change his pillow and make a few other little changes in the background and sort of, that's where. And they just went, oh my God, there's got to be bigger things in here. So, you know, then I'm sat there, you know, and just going, you know, certain things sort of happened. They just decided one afternoon Alex Ferguson came in and went, you know, we're going to have double up training sessions. We're going to do training in the morning and in the afternoon. Never heard of before ever. And so the physios ringing me up. So what do we do in between the training sessions? Because they normally have lunch and go home. So I said, well, we'll create a little recovery room for them. And so they can go in there and lie down and maybe take one of those or a nap or something, or a little sleep or something. But there you go. Well, you know, you've got 40% of the team who are AM AS on the other half of PM. What do you want about. It's called Chronosaups. You see how they put tie their boots up and you see how those tie their boots up. You see how he does that and he does that. Oh my God. And then suddenly the data, you know, the GPS trackers started to come in and then we could see, well, this player in the morning is flying around like nuts. Great data in the afternoon now because we're collecting data in the afternoon, it's not so good. So who takes penalties? Who. What sort of mix of the defense do we have? You know, are they all. Is the goalkeeper a PM or an ama? Because we need to be careful of certain times. So suddenly we started to develop a narrative about this stuff and we started to look a little bit closer. We started to go, oh, hello. Oh hello. It's not like we're trying to completely redefine sleep in a sort of get your eight hours, otherwise you're gonna die later in life through something. It was kind of wow. So what else could we look at? And everybody loves schedules. We're all pushed to our boundaries. We've got to do this, we've got to do that, we've got to get to the gym, the 5am club and all this sort of stuff that goes on. Why don't we try and create some rhythm? So to end that little story, Mike, there's one thing I learned when I was working around clinicians and in clinics and stuff, like investigating stuff, was that we tracked sleep in 90 minute cycles and that happened to be the length of a football game in the UK. And in between, in that 90 minutes, there was a gap called half time where you would stop, reset, introduce new tactics, substitutions, rehydrate and refuel in some sort of. So you can't go a full 90 minutes. You have to have this recovery space in the middle to sort of enable you to do that. So that's really where we sat down and went, let's look at our 24 hours in 90 minute cycles. Let's look at cycle one to cycle two to cycle three. Let's look at game times. And as those years progressed, we suddenly shifted from, you know, just playing on a Saturday at 3 o'. Clock. If anybody knows about UK football, it was just on a Saturday at 3 o'. Clock. Then we started introducing, you know, we play two times a week because we're involved with Champions League and stuff like that. And then the training program started to change. We're doing it twice a day instead of once a day. And then we had phones and then we had social media and then we had, you know, Sky Sports and then we had all this sort of stuff starting to impact onto these schedules. So it became really, really important to find a rhythm to their 24 hours where we can do certain things at the right times a day. Chrono behavior, chrono nutrition, circadian alignment, tactics behaviors. And just to make sure that we're not killing the player, which is where probably sport is today, is we're killing these individuals and we don't seem to have learned that much.
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A
So there. So at first it seems like this, this has probably been worth billions of dollars, what you created with them at first. And then it went good. It was going on an upward trajectory. And then like you said, we got to a point now where we hit a plateau and it's crashing because we're killing them now. But, but from where you started to where you were at the top of that, I mean that had be worth billions of dollars. Not that everything's.
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B
A lot of other people. Yes, yeah, yeah. A lot of, A lot of the people who make mattresses, pillows, eye masks, supplements, trackers. Yeah, there's been a lot of trillion dollars been made out of the world of sleep.
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A
Yeah. And, and the production of the players and the production of the players is.
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B
Worth the dollar and their players salaries and all that sort of stuff has gone through the roof. Yeah. And you've got players still, you know, performing at the highest levels in their late 40s, you know, so that's a Longevity thing where, you know, and that sort of thing. So it's. Yeah, there's been a lot of money made out of that shift. I, I never imagined at all for one minute that we'd ever become like that.
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A
Does it wait a minute?
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B
But does that just when you asked me before. Because sometimes when you talk, you find an answer.
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A
That's right.
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B
My fear is. My ultimate fear is I've sort of dedicated my whole life to sleep and stuff and to help people all over the world just get the best sleep they possibly can. They deserve it. They don't need to get confused at this moment in time. I'm getting too many contacts, too many indications that we're making it worse. And I fear that we should try and take a step back, use technology. Amazing. But just use the technology to sort of really find out what sleep means for us all and for the new generation. Because I think the fear factor is we're just going to make everything else worse because we're far more worried about sleep than we ever have been before.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. When you worry about something, it doesn't help but have you taken a moment to, to. And I understand where we are now and, and what, what we. What has to change? But, but, but still there was a impact that you made and, and have you taken time to really appreciate that for yourself?
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B
I do. I think there's. There was a wonderful moment in time. I mean, obviously, you know, having a glass of wine with Sir Alex Ferguson back then, you, you have to sort of reflect on that and go, oh my God, look what's happened. You know, 25 years later. I think there was a moment with the England national squad. We were out in Portugal. That's a big European championship. And I completely tore this hotel apart and reset it for all the athletes because no hotel was ever set up for athletes that were set up for, you know, Bill and Marjorie having a holiday. So we tore the place apart and set it up as an elite athlete training ground. Absolutely amazing. It created so much fun in the media. It was just nuts. And I think the period of time, over about five years working British Cycling and Team sky, which was the sponsored team, and the whole objective was to put the first British rider on the podium of the Tour de France, which had never been done before. So we went through a five year strategic process and I was the, the person who was leading the sort of sleep side of it, the recovery side of it and that sort of thing. And we did all sorts. It was, it was called the aggregation of marginal gains. That was the strategic umbrella. So how you would wash your hands, just like a surgeon in a hospital, or to, to absolutely everything in minute detail. Can we just improve something? Even how we talk or how we wash our hair, the shampoo use, all of those things were taken. It was absolutely amazing. You know, a real sort of obsessive compulsive behavior about can we improve absolutely anything? Because it will all aggregate up to that. And that was brilliant because, you know, obviously cycling was quite intimidated by, you know, oral drugs and stuff like that and Mr. Armstrong and things like that. So they had. Most of the other teams around the world could not believe that we were able to, you know, break world records consistently, to consistently just smash everything, whether it's around the velodrome or on the road or. And we put a Tour de France rider on the podium as if we did that clean. And the only thing they'd ever done, which was never done before, was actually focus on sleep.
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A
Wow. It makes sense though.
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B
Everybody just went, well, it's sleep that did all of this because we've got the bikes, we've got the equipment, we've got the clothing, we've got the nutrition, and we've all done that to bits. But the bit you've done which none of us thought about was sleep. And so they put it all down to that. And so that was the moment in time that sort of culminated in the London 2012 Olympics. Because, you know, moment in time fate. London 2012 Olympics Tour de France British rider winner gold medals for fun all in your own personal Olympics in your hometown. And it was like, how did you plan that? It was almost like, you know, it didn't happen in Beijing, it didn't happen in Rio, it didn't happen, you know, back in the days in Atlanta. How did. Well, we set out a five year plan to go from there to 2012. And, and we did it. And so that was just, you know, that was just an amazing time.
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A
Yeah, it is.
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B
And, and I don't think it's been repeated once since because it puts sleep on the map.
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A
Yeah. You know, so going forward now with the situation where we're killing the players, the athletes now, what do you think needs to be done? What is the first course of action?
- [35:16]
B
It's a difficult one. It's a bit like trying to get everybody to agree on, you know, climate change and stuff like that. It's difficult. It's a world thing. It's not a, an individual company, an organization's problem. It's a, it's a Global thing, because this is what athletes and players are. But I think sometimes you just need, you know, a kick in the butt. You know, it's the same in life, isn't it? You get a knock on the door and you change your habits. Before then you would thought you were getting away with it. So I think in the world of sport, Something's got to kick their butt. We've got quite a lot of suicide rates going on, which is always a good kick in the butt. A lot of burnout, a lot of really talented athletes who are not getting through the system because they just drop out. I think feeding that media world, that sports world, that subscription world to sport, is you need athletes to do this stuff. And if there's a. If that pool of athletes is diminishing because we're not keep refilling it, then sometimes you have to sort of sit back and ask yourself the question. We need to go back to the grassroots and ask ourselves why we're not, you know, where is the next Ronaldo? Where is the next Tom Brady? You know, where is. Where are these people coming through who are filling these teams and creating our sport that we love? And it's absolutely frightening when you wander around certain NFL teams, Mike. You know, I mean, you'll know this better than me, but, you know, I've. I've been in and around that with NHL teams, NBA teams and. And these guys and girls are. Well, no, the guys principally are just so immersed in addictive behavior, you know, in all sorts of aspects of their life. Is. You just think, why would you want to join that, you know, as a career? Yeah, because it's likely to kill you. Yeah. And so I think we have to. We have to all do our best to go. You know, sport is absolutely amazing. It's sort of, you know, it collectively brings all of us together as human beings, and we need to be more human centric in everything we do in work, rest and play. We're just mammals on this planet. We are so synchronized to this planet, and yet we constantly try to create things that take us much further away from it. And so we just need to sort of, you know, use the technology. Use the emerging technologies to. To enable us to create a bit more space for us, you know, so, you know, when you ever hear about, well, that's going to take my job away and that's going to. I don't mind that at all, Mike. Yeah, if it gives you more time to go out into the woods and do some fishing and swimming. Yeah, sort of thing.
- [38:44]
A
Yeah.
- [38:45]
B
Because we've taken all of that stuff away from ourselves and it's so vital to our biological functionality, to our mental functionality, to everything I do. And now you can hear me getting passionate, Mike, because that's my fear is we just simply won't grab the hands of our children and our next generation and be able to help them, you know, to cope with this thought stuff, because we're just making it really hard for them. So I hope the whole organization in sport, but I, I haven't come across yet. It's just say, stop, slow down. This is not what we want from our sport. We, we want, we want grassroots sport. We want kids to play sport and be healthy and be outside and active. We, you know, it's not about having them stuck in front of computers. Well, forget that. This is how we live our lives. They can learn from this stuff. They can be amazing people with this stuff. So don't penalize them for. But we do need this balance of being out about and active and stuff like that. That's, that's the fear.
- [40:00]
A
You know, I noticed in the NBA, I'm a Sixers fan, so. But I've noticed how they very, they're doing a really good job and the fans hate this, the media hates this. But Joel Embiid, they're resting him a lot. They're hardly playing him at all. Paul George is another star player. They, they very, very careful and rested him. Kyle Lowry, they have players now that they're just, they'll put them in every so often, but they're not just grinding and getting everything they can out of them right now. Yeah. And they're getting a lot of hell for it. But I see why they're doing it from. Based on what you're saying. And, and then Dallas Cowboys lost a player that just scored a defensive touchdown the week before his fiance's pregnant and he got into police chafing chase and ended up committing suicide. You know, and, and so, yeah, I mean, it's definitely something. So. All right, so we're up against the clock here. Where can people go deeper with you and learn more? Nick?
- [40:55]
B
Well, to connect with me.
- [40:56]
A
Yeah. Learn more and go deeper with it.
- [40:58]
B
Yeah. My, my website is called sportsleepcoach.com in sport with ADNAs, you put your book up. So there you go.
- [41:07]
A
Let's see it.
- [41:10]
B
I've also got a playbook on Amazon as well, which is a classic thing, but yeah, you know, Instagram, Tick tock, Twitter, wherever. You know, I'm a very small bespoke consultancy Business. You know, anybody can get in touch, ask questions. I have people from all walks of life, like surgeons in the U.S. pilots in the U.S. nFL players in the U.S. all that sort of stuff as well as around the world. I think the, the one thing that, that's quite inspiring is, is, is women's sports, female sport. They have, they have such a better take on this than the men do. Yeah. I think they'll be the ones that sort of redefine what goes on. So, you know, There you go. Sportsleepcoast.com Read my book, 18 Languages around the world. And just, just whatever you do, if you're taking sleep for granted, is put an ink on it and call it sleeping. Because sleep is passive. You just chuck it in at the end of your day, call it sleeping, make it proactive, grab an arp, the most consistent start to your day. Chop your day up into 90 minute cycles and really start creating a more human centered rhythm to your day. And you'll be more productive, more resilient. You'll sleep better, probably less. You'll be more sociable, you'll be more happier. You'll cope with menopause, peripause a lot of mental health issues. You will achieve your goals and be as successful as you want to be.
- [43:03]
A
And sexy. And sexy. Yeah, sexy.
- [43:07]
B
Because most, you know, passion and drive creates schedules, Mike, doesn't it? Yeah. And schedules create problems. What you want is to be able to have the energy to make sure that your passion and your drive and the schedules that are created are your friend and don't become your enemy.
- [43:31]
A
Good one. I like that.
- [43:32]
B
That's what happened.
- [43:33]
A
Yeah, I love it. Nick Little hails everyone. Nick, thank you so much for your time today and your vulnerability. I really appreciate it.
- [43:40]
B
Send me a T shirt, Mike.
- [43:41]
A
All right, we'll get you one.
- [43:42]
B
All right.
- [43:43]
A
I got, I got some new things coming out. We changed the logo a little bit. This is the old logo, but I'll take care of you. And I, I thank, thank you for being a part of our network and that one network on the WhatsApp chat.
- [43:51]
B
Amazing. Yeah. Thank you very much.
- [43:53]
A
We're doing amazing things there to expand all parts of humanity all over the globe. And you're part of it. I appreciate that. So hang tight while I wrap this up, folks. Thank you so much for being here on the what do you made of show with your boy Crock. With Nick Little Hells sharing what he's made of. Until next time, make sure you hit the subscribe follow button at the top of your favorite podcast platform and keep coming back. Until next time, be that one.