Sleep & Recovery

This pillar is my ongoing lab experiment: measure what matters, run controlled changes, and keep what reliably improves deep sleep, HRV, and how I feel the next day. You get a front-row seat to every test — wins, failures, and surprises.

Upload Today’s Sleep Data → Read Sleep Experiments →

Part 1: Sleep Hygiene (The Environment + The Rules)

Sleep hygiene is the set of habits and environmental conditions that make high-quality sleep more likely. The goal is simple: make your bedroom a reliable “sleep trigger.”

My 5 non-negotiables

Temperature: cool the room/bed so my body can drop core temperature and stay asleep.
Darkness: treat the bedroom like a cave (blackout curtains + no glowing LEDs).
Quiet: minimize noise spikes (or use consistent sound like a fan/white noise).
Consistency: same bedtime + wake time (even weekends when possible).
No technology: remove screens and mentally activating inputs before bed.

Why it matters

Public-health guidance consistently emphasizes a cool, dark, quiet bedroom, consistent sleep timing, turning off electronics before bed, and avoiding heavy meals near bedtime. (See references at bottom.)

Part 2: The Wind-Down Protocol (Turning “Off” on Purpose)

If the day is sympathetic (“go-go-go”), I don’t expect my body to magically flip into parasympathetic mode. I schedule a runway to sleep.

3 wind-down options I rotate

Absence of screens: phone down, no laptop, no doomscrolling.
Meditation / breath work: guided meditation, box breathing, or a simple body scan.
Physical books: paper book + dim light to quiet the mind without blue-light stimulation.

Part 3: Close the Kitchen (3 Hours Before Bed)

This is one of my highest-ROI rules: kitchen closed ~3 hours before bed. If I eat late, my heart rate tends to stay elevated, sleep fragments, and next-day energy suffers.

Rule: stop full meals ~3 hours before bedtime.
If hungry: small, light option (not heavy/spicy/fatty).
Experiment focus: make the last meal lighter and earlier whenever possible.

The experiment mindset

I treat changes like A/B tests. One variable at a time, track outcomes, keep what wins.

Part 4: Sleep Tracking (My Instrumentation Stack)

“What gets measured gets improved” — but only if you understand what your metrics mean. I’m building a personal model of what drives my sleep quality, recovery, and next-day performance.

Step 1: Garmin (My baseline wearable)

I use Garmin as my daily “always-on” tracker. It gives me a consistent view of sleep stages, recovery, and overall readiness.

Sleep Quality & Sleep Stages

Garmin summarizes sleep and estimates time spent in Light, Deep, and REM sleep. Conceptually: light sleep is the transition/support phase, deep sleep is more physical restoration, and REM is strongly associated with brain/memory/emotional processing.

Garmin note

Garmin’s “Advanced Sleep Monitoring” explains these stages and their role in recovery.

Body Battery (My favorite “energy gauge”)

Garmin’s Body Battery is a 0–100 “reserve energy” estimate based on HRV, stress, sleep quality, and activity — like a fuel gauge for your body.

My monthly challenge: get 7 days in a month where my morning Body Battery is 76+.
Current result: I’ve only achieved this once — which makes it a perfect target for experiments.
My hypothesis: overnight recovery speed is tightly linked to HRV + how well I control stressors.

HRV & Recovery Speed

A lower overnight HRV (for me) usually means slower recovery: Body Battery doesn’t refill as much, and I start the day “behind.” HRV is sensitive to stress load — physical or mental.

What I’m watching

Room temperature: too warm = restlessness and worse recovery.
Digestion / late meals: eating late can keep the body “working” when it should be recovering.
Overtraining / mental stress: load without recovery often shows up as suppressed HRV.

Helpful explainer videos (HRV, recovery, and sleep)

These are good primers on HRV, stress, recovery, and why things like late meals and stress can show up in your metrics. (I’ll link specific experiments on the blog as I run them.)

Part 5: Other Measurement Aids (Where the science gets fun)

Wearables infer sleep from heart rate/movement. EEG measures brain activity more directly. I’m running both — and comparing what each tool claims vs what I experience.

My current sleep gear

Tool	What it measures / why I use it	Link
Garmin Watch	Daily baseline: sleep stages, Body Battery, stress/HRV patterns, trend tracking.	Garmin device page
Velia Ring	Adds ring-based sensing; I’m especially interested in its temperature and overnight recovery signals.	veliaring.com
NextSense EEG Sleep	EEG-based approach (brain activity). I’m using this to compare “inferred” sleep vs brain-sensed sleep stages.	nextsense.io
BedJet	Temperature control is one of my biggest levers. BedJet lets me test cooling/warming profiles and see what improves deep sleep and HRV.	bedjet.com

What’s coming

I’ll post experiments for each tool (and combinations), including: temperature curves, kitchen cut-off timing, training-load weeks vs deload weeks, and stress-management protocols — with screenshots, notes, and results.

References (Sleep Hygiene + Wind-Down)

These sources support the principles used on this page (cool/dark/quiet, consistent schedule, reducing electronics, and avoiding heavy meals near bedtime).