Travel, time zones and mood: how life on the road unsettles athletes

“It was three in the morning, and I was lying in a hotel room staring at the ceiling, wondering why I still do any of this.”

That sentence is surprisingly common. It is said by an athlete with eight hours of flying behind them, two airport changes and a competition in two days. They are not talking about a defeat or an injury. They are talking about something that seems almost trivial: they cannot sleep. But there is something else in that sentence too — a doubt they would never voice during the day, surrounded by teammates and the coach. At night, in the middle of a foreign time zone, it surfaces uninvited.

In this post I write about how travel, time zones and constant moving around affect an athlete’s sleep and mood. I am writing as a therapist in training under supervision in marriage and family therapy, not as a sport psychologist or a doctor — so I am less interested in your performance than in what happens to you as a person while you travel: to your body, your relationships and your sense of belonging somewhere.

An inner clock that does not fly with you

Each of us carries an inner clock — the circadian rhythm. It is a roughly twenty-four-hour cycle that governs when we are sleepy and when we are alert, when our body temperature rises, when hormones are released and when our reactions are quickest. Its main “setter” is light, followed by mealtimes, movement and company.

When you cross several time zones in a few hours, the clock on your phone changes instantly. The clock in your body does not. It adjusts slowly — a rough rule of thumb is that the body needs about one day for each time zone crossed, and travelling east is usually harder than travelling west. The day becomes shorter, and the body finds it easier to stretch its day than to cut it short.

Until the inner clock catches up with the outer one, you live in a kind of split. Your body thinks it is the middle of the night, while everyone around you expects you at breakfast, at training, at a press conference. This is not just tiredness. Researchers link jet lag with poorer sleep, poorer concentration, digestive trouble, and also with irritability and low mood.

What research says about athletes’ sleep

For athletes, sleep is one of the most powerful yet most underrated sources of recovery. Reviews of the research show that sleep loss in athletes mainly impairs whatever demands precision, decision-making and endurance, and that it also affects mood and the sense of effort.

One of the more widely cited studies looked at what happens when athletes extend their sleep. Players from a university basketball team tried to spend ten hours a night in bed for several weeks. Their sprint times and shooting accuracy improved, and they also reported feeling better. The study was small — it included only eleven players — so we should not read too much into it. But the message is clear: sleep is not an optional extra to training.

Another finding seems important to me. In an Australian study, almost two thirds of athletes (64%) reported that at least once in the previous year they had slept worse than usual before an important competition. The reasons they gave most often were thoughts about the competition and nerves, not noise or an uncomfortable bed. So sleep is not only about the body. It mirrors what we carry in our heads.

If you would like to know what happens in the nervous system when the brain cannot let go of the day, I wrote about it in Insomnia: what happens in the nervous system when the brain won’t let go of the day.

Why everything is harder at night

When you sleep too little, it is not only your responsiveness on the field that changes. Your emotional world changes too. After a sleepless night, the part of the brain that detects danger is more reactive, while your ability to calm down and put things into perspective is weaker. That is why, after a bad night, the coach’s criticism feels harsher, a mistake in training feels bigger and home feels further away. I wrote more about this in Sleep and emotion: why everything hurts more after a bad night.

For athletes, this easily turns into a vicious circle. Tiredness raises tension, tension worsens sleep, and poorer sleep increases the worry that you will not be ready. Some start controlling their sleep so tightly that the control itself becomes the reason they cannot sleep. The fear of insomnia is often worse than the insomnia itself.

That thought at three in the morning — “why do I still do any of this” — is therefore not necessarily the truth about your life. It may also be the voice of a tired nervous system that cannot find anything to hold on to in a foreign time and place. I am not saying you should not take it seriously. I am only saying it is worth looking at it again during the day, once you are rested.

Loneliness on the road

In sport, travel is talked about mainly as logistics: flights, hotels, food, adjustment. Much less is said about what many athletes feel most strongly — loneliness.

On the road you are surrounded by people, and yet you can still be alone. The team is both a community and a competitive environment. The coach is someone you trust and also someone who decides your place in the line-up. Your family is in a different time zone: when you have time, they are asleep; when they wake up, you are training. In Slovenia this is well known in winter sports, for example, where the World Cup takes athletes from venue to venue for months, sometimes across the ocean.

Loneliness is not just an unpleasant feeling. Research links it with poorer sleep — as if a body that does not feel safe within a community stays half awake. That is why loneliness and poor sleep on the road tend to reinforce each other: the more alone you are, the worse you sleep; the worse you sleep, the less energy you have for connection.

This is often where your relationships at home show up too. A partner who waits, children who grow up without you, parents who do not know what to say after a defeat. I have written more about how one person’s career plays out in a couple in The athlete and the relationship.

A short conversation

This is how a conversation might begin with an athlete who has just returned from a tour on another continent (the conversation is composite and does not describe a real person):

“When I got home I was in a fog for three days. Everyone was happy, and I was just angry.”
“Who were you angry with?”
“Everyone. My boyfriend, because he wanted to go out. My mum, because she kept asking how it went. Myself, because I wasn’t grateful.”
“How did you sleep those days?”
“Hardly at all. I was awake at four, and at three in the afternoon I could have fallen asleep on a chair.”
“Maybe the anger wasn’t a message about them. Maybe it was a message about how exhausted you were — and how long you’d been on your own.”

This happens a lot: a mood we put down to our relationships or to ourselves is in fact partly the result of the body not having arrived home yet. That does not mean the anger says nothing. It does mean it is wise to look after your sleep first, before drawing big conclusions from it.

What you can do on the road

For a plan to adjust to time zones, the right people to ask are your team doctor, a sleep specialist or a sport psychologist. Still, a few general principles are worth knowing:

• Light is your most powerful tool. Daylight at the right time helps the inner clock shift. At the wrong time it can push it in the wrong direction, so for longer trips it makes sense to plan this with a specialist.
• Let meals and movement follow the new time as far as you can.
• A short nap can help, but a long afternoon sleep often prolongs the adjustment.
• Alcohol is not a sleeping aid. It helps you fall asleep but breaks up the second half of the night. More on this in the entry alcohol and sleep.
• Talk to a doctor about melatonin, sleeping pills or other aids. For athletes this matters even more because of anti-doping rules and the effect on concentration the next day.
• Write down how you sleep. After a few trips, a sleep diary will show you a pattern you would not notice from memory alone.

When it comes to chronic insomnia that persists at home too, Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) has proved very effective. It is delivered by professionals trained in it.

But besides the body’s rhythm there is another rhythm that gets talked about less: the rhythm of connection. When and how you hear from the people at home, who on the road you can talk to about something other than results, where you have a small corner that is just yours. This rhythm matters no less for how you will sleep.

Exercise: an evening landing in a strange place

This is a simple exercise you can do tonight — in a hotel, an apartment or at home after you get back. It is not meant to force you to sleep, but to show your body that the day is over and that you are safe.

1. Close the day on paper. Five minutes before bed, write down three things that happened today and one thing that worries you about tomorrow. Next to the worry, write when you will deal with it — for example, “tomorrow after breakfast”. That way it does not have to stand guard while you are in bed.
2. Connect with one person. Send a message or a voice note to someone who cares about you rather than your result. It need not be long. It is enough to touch base with someone who belongs to your life outside sport.
3. Bring home into the room. Always use the same small ritual: the same music, the same caffeine-free tea, the same book, your own pillow. The body gets used to repetition and starts linking it with sleep, whatever country you are in.
4. Slow your breathing. Lying down, lengthen your out-breath a few times so it is longer than your in-breath. You are not looking for perfect relaxation, just a few slower rounds.
5. If you cannot sleep, get up. If you are still lying awake after a long while, get up, go to a dimly lit part of the room and do something calm until you feel sleepy. Let the bed remain a place for sleep, not a battlefield.

The exercise does not replace an adjustment plan drawn up by a specialist. But it adds something such plans often lack: the feeling that you are not entirely alone in a strange place.

When it is not (only) about travel

I want to be honest about the limits of what I have written. Not everything that happens to an athlete’s sleep and mood is down to time zones.

If poor sleep continues for weeks after you get back, if nothing seems to bring you joy any more, if you are withdrawing from people, or if thoughts come up that it would be better if you were not here, that is not jet lag. These may be signs of depression or another kind of distress that needs attention. I have written about depression in athletes, but in a situation like this it is very important to turn first to your GP or team doctor, or to a psychiatrist.

It is also worth knowing that some people have sleep disorders that have nothing to do with travel — for example, breathing problems during sleep. These belong with a doctor and a sleep laboratory, not in a therapy room.

And finally: if what interests you most is how to compete better abroad — what routines to use before a competition, how to plan your adjustment, how to stay focused — the right person to see is a sport psychologist. Psychotherapy comes in when it turns out there is more behind the tiredness: loneliness that lasts, a relationship that is fraying, or the question of who you are when you are not on the road.

If the distress feels too much, you can call the mental health crisis line Klic v duševni stiski on 01 520 99 00 (every day from 7 pm to 7 am) or the Samaritans helpline Zaupni telefon Samarijan on 116 123 (24 hours a day), both in Slovenia. In an emergency, call 112 in Slovenia.

How psychotherapy can help

In relational family therapy, the approach I am training in, we always look at a person in relationship — to themselves, to the people close to them and to the systems they live in. For an athlete, one of those systems is the team, the club and life on the road.

In therapy we can explore what happens to you when you are far from home. Is the loneliness on the road perhaps something you have known before? What was it like the first time you were away from home as a child — at a camp or at a sports school? Who looked after you then, and how? It often turns out that today’s reactions on the road carry traces of older experiences.

We can also work on your relationships at home — on how you talk with your partner when you are in a different time zone, and how you come back without falling out every time you arrive. Sometimes it is helpful to invite your partner too, so the two of you can look together at what the travelling means for your relationship. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

If you are curious how these patterns show up when tiredness lasts longer, read Burnout in athletes.

What to remember

• Your inner clock does not change with the flight. It needs roughly one day for each time zone crossed, and eastward is usually harder.
• Poor sleep affects not only performance but mood: after a bad night, emotions are louder and thoughts darker.
• Loneliness on the road is a serious matter and is amplified by poor sleep. Look after the rhythm of connection, not only the body’s rhythm.
• Medication, melatonin and an adjustment plan are for a doctor and a sleep specialist; performance is for a sport psychologist.
• If the distress continues at home, it is no longer jet lag — seek help from a doctor, a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist.