Part of my fanatical comeback campaign included buying an altitude tent, pitching it our spare room and sleeping in it for the entire year. Some studies had found an improved recovery rate and aerobic capacity in athletes who sleep at altitude (inside the tent) and train at sea level (the Whitten Oval, Footscray).
The tent was plugged into a machine that created this superb white noise, which managed to drown out the chaos of the Darcy house. It was the best year’s sleep I have ever had.
Our third child, Will, arrived the week before round one, which made escaping to the spare room and sleeping inside a noise-proof bubble a godsend.
I managed to scrape through every game after my return - but not at a standard I felt comfortable with. The Bulldogs missed the finals, losing our last seven games, and making the decision to retire a fairly simple one.
It was actually a more difficult decision to part with the tent (although the message from the home front was that I could take it somewhere and move into it permanently if I was so attached to it).
AFL players are prepared to do just about anything within the rules to enhance their performance.
Ben Cousins’ admission to hospital following an overdose of prescription sleeping tablets has sparked a lot of debate on this issue. Should players be able to load up on caffeine pre-game? Should sleeping pills be banned? Is the use of stimulants and sedatives the right example to set for the young people growing up playing the game?
My belief is that it is extremely rare for players to use caffeine tablets pre-game, then sleeping tablets the night after the game as part of their weekly routine.
The practice of caffeine loading (taking the equivalent of three or four lattes) prior to competing has been widespread in sport for a number of years. Some studies indicate that caffeine not only makes you more alert but also, under fatigue, converts fat stored in the body to energy.
For about a season and a half, I took four or five No-Doz caffeine tablets as part of my pre-game preparation. It coincided with a reasonably consistent run of form and, as most sports people would admit, you can become quite superstitious about these things and reluctant to change anything in your routine.
Like most players I found sleeping after a game almost impossible, and being loaded up with caffeine didn’t help. So eventually, as other players have done, I decided it wasn’t for me, valuing sleep and recovery over the need to be jolted with a coffee hit.
The message young people may have received from this week’s events is that AFL players will swallow almost any pill to help them win. Not a great image. Nor is it accurate: the medical, fitness and conditioning staff who oversee the players are considered to be on a par with the world’s best, and the situation is not one where players are randomly self-medicating. Although, as Ben Cousins has proved, it can all still go very wrong.
Some players will go to the extent of weighing every meal they eat in order to get the exact amounts of protein and carbohydrate they require. Pain-killing injections, ice baths, acupuncture, massage, sport psychology … the search goes on for legitimate ways to enhance performance and, hopefully, gain an edge over opponents.
Football mirrors life in many ways. People often look for magic pills or remedies to cure them, help them lose weight or gain an edge. But thinking about it logically, the answers to feeling good and performing well are pretty simple. Eat healthy food, train well and hard, get plenty of sleep, and be honest with your own self-assessment and what you can do to improve. A few coffees and a sleeping pill are probably not the answer.
In about seven weeks a fourth Darcy is due to join two brothers and a sister. I’ve been scouring the internet for any research that links sleeping in an altitude tent to performing well as a sports commentator. Unfortunately, it looks as though I’m going to have to take some of my own advice. Eat a bit healthier, train some more and hopefully get some sleep.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
