By Chris Gowen, Founder, Directional Force
You can outwork a lot of things but bad sleep is not one of them.
I learned that the hard way, long before I started Directional Force. On the job, with LAPD Gang and Narcotics, then with the Marshals and the fugitive task forces, sleep was the first thing the schedule took. Long shifts. Overtime that did not ask permission. A phone that could go off at any hour. The kind of day where your nervous system stays up even after you lie down. You tell yourself you will catch it later. Later does not come. The debt just moves into the next shift, the next workout, the next decision.
That pattern did not retire when the badge did. Training hard, running a business, and carrying the normal load of life will do the same thing if you let them. Poor sleep plagued me through the career. It still shows up when I get sloppy. And every time my sleep suffers, my training suffers with it. Speed goes first. Then patience. Then the willingness to do the hard set when nobody is watching. That is usually when I go back on the hunt for better rest.
Sleep is the most important ingredient in recovery. Not a supplement. Not a hack. The session after the session. Hormones, tissue repair, memory, reaction time, mood, they all settle while you are down. Miss it and the work you did that day does not land the way it should. You can be disciplined in the gym and still lose the session in the bedroom.
Cortisol is part of the bill
Cortisol is not the enemy. It is a timing problem.
It is supposed to rise in the morning and get you moving, then fall through the day so you can come down at night. Stress keeps it up when it should be dropping. So does late light. So does a brain that will not shut off. So does a schedule that never really ends. On the job that was overtime, callouts, and the daily weight of the work. Now it is training stress stacked on business stress stacked on whatever the day handed me. The body does not sort those into separate piles. Load is load.
You feel high nighttime cortisol as wired-and-tired. Eyes burning. Shoulders up. Mind still running the day, the workout, the thing you did not finish. You are exhausted and you still cannot drop in. That is the state that followed me through a lot of years in law enforcement, and it is the state that still shows up when I let the evening get away from me. Poor sleep then feeds the next day's cortisol. You wake up behind, you push harder, you stay up later, and the loop tightens. Training feels heavier than it should. Recovery markers you can actually feel, spring in the legs, patience under the bar, the want to go again.
I do not treat cortisol like a switch I can flip with a trick. I treat the inputs. Morning light so the rhythm has a start. A hard session early enough that it is not still ringing at midnight. The phone down. A dark room that tells the body the day is over. The stack, when I need it. None of that is magic. All of it is aimed at letting cortisol fall on time so sleep can do its job.
The thing that wakes me up
There is a second thief in my house, and it is not drama. It is water.
I drink a lot. Training, heat, a long day on my feet, fluid intake is not optional if you want to perform. The cost is nights where I wake up to pee, and some of those nights I can't fall back to sleep. One trip is manageable. The second trip, with the mind already scanning and cortisol already curious, is where the night breaks. You are up. The light hits. The brain starts the day at 2 a.m. Getting back under is not guaranteed.
The practical fix and common sense tells you to hydrate earlier in the day, but it doesn't always work for me. I try to front-load it so the bladder is not running the night shift but I'm still up once or twice to pee no matter what.
What I have actually run
I have experimented with a lot of sleep aids and protocols over the years. Some helped for a week. Some left me foggy. A few did nothing except lighten my wallet. Prescription options, over-the-counter options, routines I picked up from other people and other athletes. I stay skeptical and I stay testing, because the goal is not a perfect night on paper. The goal is waking up able to train and function at a high level.
Right now I am running the Huberman protocol and the results have been pretty good so far. The core stack, taken about 30 to 60 minutes before lights out, is magnesium L-threonate (or bisglycinate if threonate bothers your gut), apigenin, and L-theanine. Typical amounts he cites are about 145 mg of elemental magnesium from threonate, 50 mg of apigenin, and 100 to 400 mg of theanine. He is clear that you do not need all three, but I take all three, and that you should add one at a time so you know what is doing what. I didn't do that. I started all three at the same time to maximize the benefits immediately. I am linking the stack I am using to my Amazon page here:
https://www.amazon.com/shop/cdgowen/list/3AAB1E0SL2HPZ?ref_=aipsflist&tag=chrisgowen-20
One honest note. The protocol increases vivid dreaming for me. That tracks with what Huberman has said about theanine, some people get intense dreams and have to drop it or cut the dose. I am not complaining about the dreams yet. I am watching whether they fragment the night or just make it memorable. If they start costing me deep sleep, theanine is the first thing I adjust.
I also put melatonin back in, even though Huberman does not take it as a regular part of his stack. Adding it to the stack is a personal call, not medical advice, and it is not me saying his position is wrong. It is me saying the scoreboard is how I feel and train the next morning.
The non-negotiables
Supplements are the last five percent. The room and the hour before bed do more, and they are the part that actually gives cortisol a reason to come down.
Sleep in a dark, cool room. Cool means you are not fighting the blanket. The drop in core temperature is one of the signals the body uses to start the night, and a warm room fights that signal. Dark means no standby lights, no hallway glow, no phone face-up on the nightstand. Light at the wrong hour tells the brain it is still daytime, and daytime is when cortisol belongs.
Put the phone down at least an hour before bed. The scroll is a cortisol drip. It feels like rest. It is not rest. It is more input, more comparison, more unfinished business, right when the system is supposed to be closing the books.
Same wake time as often as the life allows. Morning light in the eyes, early, before the inbox. That morning light is what anchors the cortisol peak where it belongs, so the evening drop has somewhere to fall from. Caffeine has a curfew — I do not need it eight to ten hours before I want to be down. Training stays hard, but the last hours of the day are not for picking a fight with my nervous system.
The standard
Dark room. Cool room. Phone down. Fluid early. Cortisol allowed to fall instead of being fed all night. A stack I can actually feel, melatonin back in at a low dose, and the discipline to treat bedtime like it matters, because it does.
You cultivate sleep the way you cultivate strength. On purpose. Dedicate yourself to optimal recovery, because that is optimal living.
Disclaimer: Consult a fitness professional before starting any new workout, especially if you have pre-existing injuries. Listen to your body and adjust weights or reps as needed. Always consult a healthcare provider before starting any workout program or physical activity to make sure that you're healthy enough. Consult your physician before starting any nutrition or training program, especially if you have health conditions. Results vary based on individual effort, consistency, and adherence. Chris Gowen is not a fitness trainer or a physician. These are his personal opinions not medical, training, nutritional, dieting, or medical advice.
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