PODCAST - my evening routine for better sleep, recovery, and energy
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite limitations, let's get started.
Every great day starts well before morning, and while it is extremely important to have a very powerful morning routine every single day, it may be more important what your evening routine is. That's why today on the show, [00:01:00] I'm gonna share with you my evening routine for better sleep. Recovery and energy that set me up for success the next day.
Now, I don't want you to think, oh, I gotta do all the things. Oh man, I haven't even started a morning routine. Now I gotta do an evening routine. Let's take a step back. The importance of having a routine in the evening, along with the morning, or if you have neither one of these things, let's just, you're watching this video, you're listening to this episode.
Let's start with an evening routine. Focus isn't to have a comprehensive, long routine. The focus for you friend is to have maybe one or two routine actions that you can take every evening to set yourself up. For success to set yourself up for sleep recovery and energize you for the next day. Let's start with just one or two things, just one.
You can strip it down to one thing. I don't want you to [00:02:00] go from not having a routine at all to having a routine with seven things. Let's start with one. Okay. As I go through my evening routine, I want you to use this for ideas. I want you to use this to start crafting your routine. I want you to select one or two things that you can start doing today.
Tonight. I want you to take one of these things and start integrating it into your routine. And then you can habit stack and build from there. I actually have another video, an episode on my channel, all about how to create powerful habits, how to stack a habit that you are looking to create in between two other habits that you already have to set yourself up for success to actually sustain the new habit.
Two to four hours before bed is when my routine starts. Now, I don't want you to think about, oh my God, this is a two to four hour routine. It's not, there's just specific things that I start thinking about two to four hours before bed, and I know that most nights I go to bed by 11:00 PM sometimes a little later, [00:03:00] sometimes a little earlier.
So for me, this happens. As early as 7:00 PM as late as 9:00 PM what I'm really looking at two to four hours before bed is pretty simple. I stop eating, I stop ingesting calories. This means not only consuming calories via food, but consuming calories, consuming sugar via drinks. This is why alcohol is so bad for you.
This is why alcohol can really impact sleep impacts so many things 'cause we tend to drink alcohol at night, tend to have hot chocolate at night. There's these things that when I say before bed, we want to start fasting. For me, I start fasting two to four hours before bed. That means no eating. That means no drinking kombucha.
That means no drinking. Na beer means just keep the calories out. This helps set myself up. For sleep. What happens is if you keep eating later and later and later, you're setting yourself up [00:04:00] to have fuel in your system that your body doesn't know what to do with when you go to sleep. 'cause when you go to sleep, your body's resting.
It's not ready to burn calories. So you have this. Energy in your system that isn't being used, and depending on how you and your body are set up, this may cause different things for you. This may show up in different ways For me. My heart will beat faster for me. I will feel restless because I have energy in my system that I'm not using, that I'm not burning.
So two to four hours before bed, I stop eating or ingesting calories. Next one. To two hours before bed, and this may be the hardest item on the board. I put my phone away. Now I'm working at this. This doesn't happen every night. Maybe this happens two or three days a week. Regardless what I'm doing. Is being mindful, [00:05:00] being present consciously making the decision to decrease my phone and screen usage at least one to two hours before bed.
What I've got a really good at doing is turning my phone screen to gray scale. Well before bed, and you can do this by going into your phone settings and having generative AI help you with how to do this with your specific phone. And then you can set up a shortcut that allows you to go between having color and gray scale.
For me, I hit the one button on the side of the iPhone, the, the off button, the power button. I tap it three times, it goes to gray scale, tap it three times, it goes back. To color, now you gotta set it up. It, it's not just gonna happen right now if you do it, so you have to set it up and then you can have that shortcut.
But what I've been trying to do lately is put my phone away one to two hours before bed. I have an alarm on my phone that goes off at 9:00 PM which for me is gonna be at least one hour before bed, but a lot of times, two hours before bed, [00:06:00] when that alarm goes off, that tells me I need to put my phone away and stop using my phone.
Now, this doesn't always happen 'cause you know, sometimes I'll be texting friends or family before bed, or I'll get sucked into a Dungeons and Dragons article or something. But for the most part, this has helped me to tell myself, Hey, it's 9:00 PM you need to put your phone away. And then I put it in the other room, I put it to charge and I leave it.
Now let's dig more into what my wind down routine actually is. 'cause the first two things are stop eating, stop using the phone. These are things to just stop doing. But what do I actually consciously do before bed? Well, in the last couple of years, I've gotten really into having tea and specifically 'cause if you have tea with caffeine before bed, that isn't gonna help for me.
I have either sleepy time. Which is a brand name or a type of tea from the Celestial Seasonings brand or chamomile tea. Now, sleepy [00:07:00] Time actually has chamomile in it and some other things in it as well. But the point is I have tea. I have a warm beverage no matter what time of the year it is, and. I have specific tea that promotes sleep.
Chamomile, promotes sleep, the mixes of different herbals within sleepy time, including chamomile promotes sleep. So maybe you could add this to your nighttime routine. This might be one of the easier things you can add. It's just have tea and if you have it every night, great. If you have it a couple times a week.
Great. See how you feel those nights that you have it, and maybe you can solely train your brain to be like, I sleep better when I have tea. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I should have tea more nights of the week. I also take magnesium. Now, I'm not a healthcare professional. I don't even know if I spelled magnesium right on the board, and I'm not giving you advice of what you should actually take.
I'm sharing my experience. I have a disclaimer in the show notes and in the description, if you're watching this [00:08:00] on YouTube. So when I say I take magnesium, I take magnesium 'cause it works for me, and there's a specific magnesium that I take that works for me. It's from a specific brand. I'm not even gonna share with you what that is because you need to figure out if this is even good for you and your life and in your diet, and see if it fits into your overall health plan that you have with your healthcare professional.
But for me, magnesium. Helps me sleep and it helps my muscles recover. So I take magnesium every single night before bed. In the same vein, I also take 100% CB, D. Before bit. I say a hundred percent because you gotta be careful when you are purchasing C, B, D, depending on where you're getting it from. Even if the bottle says less than zero point, whatever percent, THC in the bottle or in the soft gel, whatever you get, you may not be having a [00:09:00] hundred percent C, B, D.
And why this is important is because the higher. Dosage volume A, C, BD that you take, the more likely you are to ingest large dosage volumes of THC, which can cause the effects that THC has on our bodies. So for me, I have a specific type of CBDI take from a specific company who has a process where, a patented process where they completely remove THC from their product.
The high, it is one of the highest, if not the highest quality CBD on the market. And I take it 'cause it not only helps me with sleep, helps me with a lot of other things in my life, decreasing inflammation and other things. But yet again, you need to talk to your healthcare professional. Just 'cause it works for me doesn't mean it works for you.
Also, all CBD is not made equals You need to be very careful with that. Now the brand of CBD that I use is called Dr. Dial. Dr. DIOL. Check it out, show it to your healthcare [00:10:00] professionals. See what they think. But really, if you are going to go the CBD route, make sure it's okay with your healthcare plan, and I highly recommend.
That you stick with a hundred percent CBD day away from the THC side, a hundred percent. C, B, d. Next I stretch. Now stretching is one that doesn't happen every night for me, but three to four, even five times a week I will stretch. Now there's specific reasons why I stretch from a ultra athlete perspective.
I, if you've been following me for a while, I go through ups and downs of having plantar fasciitis. So I stretch to fight that. I stretch to prevent that I stretch to really prevent injury in general. So I have specific stretches that I do before bed, a habit stack and make sure I do it before bed. It doesn't take very long.
I really try and just do a couple of things. Maybe takes me five minutes or less, and I do that as often as I can throughout the week. Now I also brush my teeth. Hope you do too. And I [00:11:00] brush my dog's teeth. This is like. A pet owner hack. If you wanna save money on your dog's dental bills, this probably applies to other animals as well.
Brush their teeth every night and you can do it just with a toothbrush without anything else. Do not use human toothpaste on dogs. Can be extremely toxic for them. So either just do the toothbrush, which is what I do, is just a bamboo toothbrush. I brush my dog's teeth with it. Or you could find a dog's safe or a pet safe, depending on maybe you're saying, I want to brush my cat's teeth.
Find something that you can use to brush their teeth that is safe. So check with your vet to do that. But I brush my teeth and my dog's teeth every night before bed. So these things. Are pretty simple, is to have some tea, maybe have something else that helps you calm down. For me, it's magnesium and CBD stretching helps you calm down.
Maybe you wanna do some yoga, you can [00:12:00] meditate, and then brushing teeth and dog's teeth. I've done a combination. Of this throughout the years where sometimes I would do, you know, have tea other times, magnesium, other times, C, b, D, stretch, brush teeth I've done every night. I've been pretty, pretty consistent with that throughout my life.
And this is great from a sleep and recovery perspective. And if you want to take this to the next level. And start setting up the next day for success. This next technique, this next action that I'm gonna share with you has completely changed my life in the past six months, and I've tried to do it multiple times over the past.
Two or three years, actually, I think since 20 21, 20 22. I've been trying to do this and I haven't been able to consistently add it into my routine, so this is great. This next thing I'm gonna share with you, if you're gonna do one thing today, you're gonna add it to your routine. [00:13:00] You want to add this? I want you to focus.
On your wins. I got this from Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, the co-authors of the Gap in the game. Amazing book. Highly recommend that you pick up a copy. I'll have it linked in the show notes and the description below. If you're watching this video, amazing book. The premise of the book is to continuously focus on the gain in your life.
The game being your wins, and they can be really small. They could be simple wins that you have every single day. As we focus on our wins every single day, we start programming our brain to find more wins. When we focus on the gap or what we don't have in our life, what's going wrong in our life every single day, then we program our.
Brain, the focus on the gap. So the more we can focus [00:14:00] on wins, the more wins you're gonna start seeing on a daily basis, and you're gonna start having in your future wins. Attract wins. So in the gap in the game, Dan Sullivan talks about this technique that he has all of his coaching clients for years doing.
It's one of the most powerful things that you can do, and here's what it's at the end of each day. You write down three wins. Now, I've tried this a couple different ways. I've tried to just say the wins to myself. I've tried to say them to someone else. I've tried to write them down, tried to type them up.
I've tried to write them on. This notebook right here. What I find for me works the best is writing down my wind in this notebook. Every single night. Take a pen, I write on paper. For me, this has really helps this become a routine and it's more powerful for my mind. It creates a mind body connection focusing on the wins.
What I've even [00:15:00] seen is when I write down the three wins from the day, three wins becomes seven or eight wins a lot of the time. Now, I only. Challenge myself to come up with three though. And if I come up with more great for you, I invite you to at least come up with one win. Let's start there. One, win, work up to three, and then if more come, great.
Three wins. This is the routine. Come up with three wins. Now the second part of this is looking at tomorrow, so write down three wins you had. Today is the first part. Second part is projecting into the future your wins. So write down three wins you are going to have tomorrow. This is all about momentum.
We start by recounting what we achieved. Today, we take that energy, that abundant energy, and we feed it into what we want to achieve tomorrow. And note with this is [00:16:00] the three wins need to be manageable. Remember, we tend to underestimate how much we can complete in a year, and we overestimate how much we can complete in a day.
So set yourself up for success. Come up with three wins that you know you can complete tomorrow. What are the highest priority wins for you? Maybe it's training wins. You're training for an event. Maybe you have one training win, which could be running 2, 3, 4, 5 miles. Maybe you have one personal win spending time with your significant other, your kids, and maybe you have one work win.
Finishing a very important step of an important project you have. But make sure you break it down. You make it achievable. Make it achievable. Write down three wins that you want to have tomorrow. Now, really important, the three wins that you write down for tomorrow may not be the three wins that you write down tomorrow that you actually achieved, and that's okay for me.
A lot of the times I will complete [00:17:00] two of the three wins that I set out to complete, and then I'll complete like five other wins that I did not set out to complete. So. Don't get down on yourself. If the three wins that you set up for yourself for the next day aren't the three wins that you actually complete, we want there to be some overlap.
And eventually as you do this more and more, there's gonna be more and more overlap. 'cause you're gonna be able to distinguish what the highest priority things are for you the next day. What are the highest priority wins you have. But it's more important to do this exercise and to account for the wins that you have.
On any given day, and then project what you want the wins for the next day to be. And if they're different, fine. The point is have three wins that you're grateful for today and three wins that you are setting yourself up for tomorrow. Now the cool thing about this is before you even go to bed, you're telling yourself what you're gonna work on the next day.
This is how you set yourself up for success. So you've cultivated the abundant energy of focusing on the winds, and then you've created a [00:18:00] strategy of what you're gonna do the next day. So subconsciously, your mind is gonna go to work when you go to sleep and set yourself up for success the next day.
When you wake up the next day, you're gonna have your three wins written down so you know exactly what to do instead of feeling the overwhelm, not knowing what to do. This is the most powerful thing that I do in my evening routine. Now if you want to take this even further, I have my Healthy Living Guide where I go through the three pillars of Healthy Living Movement Tracking.
This is tracking, tracking your wins and accountability. This is accountability. You can actually do this with a partner. Share the three wins with them. They share the three ones back with you. If you want to start integrating the three pillars of healthy living into your life, I have my guide linked in the show notes and in the description.
If you're watching this video on YouTube, when you grab your guide, it's only gonna take you a couple minutes to read, and then you can start integrating it easily into your life. One [00:19:00] pillar. At a time. You can also go to www.athletewithasthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy today. I'll see you in the next episode.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.
