Lessons in the Art of Rest From Sport's Premier Sleep Guru

Naps. Never the sportiest or sexiest of activities, you might think. Daytime dozing tends to suggest bored Lords or cardy-clad granddads, rather than lithe, thrusting young athletes. But we've misjudged them.

Naps are actually nature's superchargers, the stuff of champions, as are several other behaviours that sound more like symptoms of a breakdown: staring blankly into space, lying in the foetal position, and sitting in a toilet cubicle with a towel over your head. Oh, and booze and sex are fine too. Within reason.

Our expert guide to matters nocturnal – or otherwise – is Nick Littlehales, the man who almost single-handedly invented 'sleep coaching,' with a little help from Sir Alex Ferguson. You may have been blissfully unaware that sleep coaching was a thing – and a lot of football managers still aren't on board – but Littlehales works with some serious sporting institutions. Manchester City, for example…

"British Cycling, Team Sky, right through to Team GB archery, to rowing, to BMX, to NFL, to NBA, women's football, rugby, rugby league – you name it," says the coach, who's slotted VICE Sports into his busy afternoon schedule. And time management is a big part of this business. "But it's all about the individuals. They're just human beings, so it's really about finding a way to mentally and physically recover over any particular period, but not in the normal perceived way. Like 'eight hours a night' – where's that come from?"

Littlehales' new book, Sleep, boasts the sub-heading 'The myth of eight hours', and this is the idea most likely to rock our worlds – or at least change our lifestyles, a bit. As he suggests, the whole sleep-all-night idea just isn't natural, and has only prevailed "since the electric lightbulb was invented. Until that point we've always slept shorter periods, more often."

The problem with the eight-hours-at-once idea, he says, is that we rarely get it, and that's particularly true of sportspeople, lying there sweating about the Olympic event they've spent four years preparing for, or tomorrow's make-or-break test innings. Young footballers are particularly prone to sleep struggles, as all that screen use – smartphones, tablets, video games – fires up the serotonin at the wrong time. "It's a 24-7 demanding culture now, and there's less opportunity to recover naturally," he explains. "You see a lot more usage of un-prescribed sleeping tablets."

Employing a sleep coach is much healthier. Spend 45 minutes talking to Littlehales and your whole outlook can change – although he'd probably suggest cutting it back to 25 and using the extra 20 minutes for a kip. Ideally, we'd all be aware of 'circadian rhythms'. They may sound like some awful band who once headlined Global Gathering, but these are what decide when we're predisposed to pass out. There are actually three "natural periods" for sleep, Nick says: "Between one and three pm; between five and seven pm, and then between 11pm and 6.30am. It's too much to be asking a vast amount of the population today to force themselves to sleep just at night."

Siesta culture certainly hasn't done the Spanish football team any harm, post-milennium. But what if your sporting life is just five-a-side after a nine-to-five: how do you fit a nap in? Well, you needn't even sleep. 'Zoning out' – staring at a blank wall – helps, as does the aforementioned toilet-cubicle-with-a-towel approach. "I can nap at my desk now, earphones in, zone out," he says. "A 20 or 30 minute nap at the right time of the day, it raises my awareness and alertness by 40-odd percent."

Littlehales – who, incidentally, sounds very much like football pundit Danny Murphy, all laconic Lancashire – actually started out as a sportsman, a jobbing pro golfer who played "alongside Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, but only creeping in the back of an event." He swapped putters for pillows, became a well-known sleep expert at a big bed company, then looked at wider applications. So he sent a speculative letter to Manchester United.

"If it had been any other club who was local to me, they'd probably have never answered the letter, because there was no reason to," he admits. "But the open-mindedness of Alex Ferguson at the time, he said: 'We're not doing anything [in this area], but I'm intrigued, so talk to the physio.'"

That dominant late-nineties team hardly looked dozy, Phil Neville aside, but were "encouraged to have a chat to me after training. The only player who came to see me was Ryan Giggs. He was still a young guy then, but was already of a different mindset about being a player and athlete. Some people have taken a slightly different attitude and can play right into their 40s."

The others thawed too – so much so that Littlehales found himself in Gary Pallister's bedroom. The lanky centre-back was suffering back problems, which involved loads of rehab; then he'd wake up the next morning immobile again. No one had checked his bed.

"He and his partner go out to the high street, buy something that was supposed to be orthopaedic, chiropractic, so it was just rock hard.

"I just changed his products, so he slept in a foetal position, almost without a pillow, with a beautiful posture line," purrs the coach. "There were some real improvements: he was able to do a bit of training, they were spending less time with him on the physio table, he had a smile on his face."

Littlehales then helped England prepare for one of their few positive tournaments: Euro 2004. "With Sven Goran Eriksson and Leif Schwartz, the doctor, we literally chose all the rooms for individual players. That was laughed at a bit, to be honest. But today I do exactly the same thing with Team Sky and British Cycling. We sent 30 'sleep kits' out to Rio."

Most hotels are pretty rubbish when it comes to beds, apparently, and many athletes will "stay in hotels where there's no choice about the products, no choice about the environment." Savvy organisations now send an expert in to also check for light, for noise, and to "make sure that this is an elite athlete room, not a room for the hen party that was there last night."

The sleep coach is understandably passionate about the discipline he largely invented, and it does make sense. Sports teams are so pedantic about post-performance recovery, it would seem a bit careless to then let their athletes go home to some ludicrous four-poster with an inbuilt TV and Xbox. Good rest can make the vital difference, energy-wise. "You've got Sir Chris Hoy or Jason Kenny, coming round that final bend, a tire width to gold," he says. "And how many football games are decided within the last four or five minutes?"

But despite this, he's suggesting that a lot of football managers simply don't get it? "A large proportion: there's still the Brian Clough-type approach, basic principles," he sighs. "You go along and say, 'we're going to start GPSing them' [to gather fitness data] and they say 'get lost!' I think even Mourinho has been reported to say that he doesn't like GPS when they're training, because he knows his players better than anything."

Well, he gets a better view than most managers – from the stands. And it's fair to say that Jose hasn't always seen eye-to-eye with his own club physios in recent years…

"Inside any club, the strength and conditioning coach wants to bring [these techniques] in, big time, because they love recovery; the physio wants to bring it in, the head of performance realises that their schedules are getting so demanding that they need to do something about it. But the manager says 'no, I didn't have it when I was a player."

We're actually talking at an interesting time for recovery-related issues, as it's a few days after the front-page reports about the late-night antics of several England players. Does the expert reckon they should have been cosying up with a cocoa? Nah. If you like a cold beer to wind down then that's "all part of the recovery process." And an occasional blow-out? Well, if you've time off lined up, and you deserve it, that can also be beneficial, otherwise players "can almost get trapped inside a bubble," he says.

It certainly seems a problem at tournaments, that pressure build-up, and Littlehales has "been involved with a number of organisations where they've banned partners coming out to events." But the old chestnut about sex affecting your energy levels is rubbish, apparently. "For some people, they experience orgasm and then start running around as if they've been injected with adrenaline," he says. "But it's all about identifying the value of this process. Some people get very disappointed when their partner lets them down when they're having sex."

What other interesting bedtime issues has he come across in the sporting world? "All the same things: people who flatulate a lot in sleep, they talk in sleep, they sing in sleep," he says. Most intriguingly, at least one case study could only nod off by switching "vacuum cleaners on, because of things that happened in their upbringing."

Sure, it might help their energy levels, but just imagine the energy bills. Nightmare.

@SiHawkins