Over time, John Corrigan and I have had some entertaining back-and-forths about sleep inertia or the zonked out feeling people have until they feel fully awake.

Sleepologists say everybody has sleep inertia; everybody just has it for different lengths of time. Some people feel fully awake after being up for 20 minutes; for
others, feeling alert can take up to four hours. (That's why 60 percent of all car accidents take place in the mornings; people not yet awake. Be careful, boys.)

John wrote that he's up and at 'em about 5:30 every morning, takes only a few minutes. So morning games are no problem for him. He's awake. I, on the other hand,
worked 30 years for newspapers, mostly the graveyard shift, and I still rarely conk out before 3 a.m., don't wake till 11 or noon, and don't feel fully awake till 1
or 2 p.m.. Which means Sunday morning games here, or those crazy 10 a.m. tournament games down South, drive me nuts.

Turns out, too, that I may be sleeping too little. If I'm lucky, I get about 7.5 hours a night.

Mens Health magazine wrote a piece this month about the importance of sleep for pro athletes, and, by extension, the rest of us.

LeBron James, the magazine said, aims to get 10 hours of sleep a day; Justin Verlander, despite being married to actress Kate Upton, clocks between
10 and 12 hours every night, and Tom Brady, spouse of super model Gisele Bundchen, tries to get to bed at 8:30 nights. The Golden State
Warriors have a room full of sleep pods where players can nap for up to several hours every day.

Not sure I could I could stay in bed for 10 hours. Old bones need to move, too. But the notions behind more sleep appeal to me: repairing muscles in tired bodies
renergizing brain cells. And, the article says its a fact: people who get eight or more hours sleep nights shoot basketballs more accurately than those who get less sleep.
Probably throw fastballs and spirals better, too. People who can't sleep 8 hours in one swoop, can, the article said, help themselves with naps during the day.

LeBron James turns 35 in December. He's the Lakers' point guard and still swishing threes. Heard him on TV last night after the 15-2 Lakers' latest win. Reporter
asked him why he thinks he's doing so well. "I don't know," James said with a sly smile. "I just feel more rested."

Verlander turns 37 in February, and he just won his second Cy Young. And 42-year-old Brady has the Patriots at 10-1.

Might be something to those extra zzz's?

In any case, congratulations to the geezers in the Roy Hobbes tournament: you all played very well, and, I'm guessing you did it in morning games, too!

You're probably good sleepers.

-Mike




-- Edited by mikehart on Wednesday 27th of November 2019 01:02:54 AM