hello and welcome to the summary of the introduction to this book which is sleep by nick littlehales and jumping right into it the first section of the introduction is where the author actually provides us with some information related to his experience in the industry this gives the reader this gives the reader the confidence about the information that he presents throughout the book and after reading it it does seem that he has got the the track record to be able to put his money where his mouth is when it comes to sleep and helping people get better sleep especially with the elite athletes he mentions that he started his career as a consultant for a company called slumberland and basically they sold mattresses and beds and he was working in the industry at one stage in his career he was also a chairman of the sleep council in the uk and while he was still a consultant at slumberland he began to realize or think and wonder if the manchester united football club actually took sleep into consideration in terms of their approach to training and helping the athletes recover better on a whim he reached out to sir alex ferguson and sent him an email asking him this very question just if manchester united actually have any scientific approach to their sleep lo and behold sir alex ferguson actually replied to his email saying that in fact at that stage they they weren't applying any scientific or concerted effort in terms of sleep for their athletes and he invited nick to come over to the club and have a look and i guess get a conversation going and after nick went to the club and spoke to the management team at manchester united they obviously were impressed by what he had to say and they actually adopted some of the techniques that he will be teaching throughout this book and it was interesting that he noted that the class of 92 had mentioned manchester united adopted this in the the season and their training and as as far as i know this was a very successful team at manchester united and so that is a really good thing to have on your cv or on his track record and at one stage alex ferguson actually became so convinced about the effects that this had on the the player's training that he fully endorsed this as a scientific approach into the sports science training at the the club and in sport in general so that was his in terms of getting into the elite sport world through manchester united and then things started opening up quite a bit more for him he he did a lot of work with british cycling so both for the olympic athletes as well as the writers of team sky who participated in events such as the tour de france he worked with athletes such as victoria pendleton during his time at british cycling and during that time he was working under the leader or the guy who was kind of in charge of running british cycling in his name being sir brailsford he's quite famous for his approach that he implemented during his reign at british cycling which a lot of people refer to as marginal gains and that's the idea of taking a lot of small improvements over different areas and eventually they stack up and it obviously did work for them because they had a very successful time during his management of british cycling and they produced some really really good results both at the olympics and in some of the grand tours both in the the female and male divisions of the their cycling kind of setup just at this point he does mention that he his experience that he has with sleep although it has it has helped a lot of athletes and a lot of people he does make it very clear that he's not a a scientist or a doctor he just really does make that super super clear and he does mention that he has worked very closely with doctors as well as one of his mentors or or kind of like someone who really kind of guided him through this when he does need to consult a medical doctor and a doctor of a doctor by the name of chris heidzerhowski i hope i pronounced that all right right and just continuing on with some of the other big name teams or athletes that he's worked with so through a connection of the england football team nick little hales got into contact with arsene wenger and he applied the same techniques and approach to their training at the football club as well as working with sam allardyce who was an early adopter of sports science during that time and so he is very eager to implement those same approaches so after reading that section it's very clear that some he's worked with some of the biggest athletes and organizations out there in the uk and so were seen and reaped with those kind of teams i'm sure you would agree with me that there is some substance to what he says and so once he's outlined his experience he then talks about why we should actually focus on sleep and he mentions that there is some type of correlation between illness and sleep and therefore if you improve your quality of your sleep it kind of sorts out a lot of things in your life and he mentions that you will be sleeping a third of your life and so it is something that you you want to be taking quite seriously and getting quite good at he makes a point at this stage that he even though he has worked with a lot of these athletes and the reader might be wondering well that's great for some of these athletes who are getting paid to the kind of money that they get paid to focus on their career but are these same techniques going to apply to me as a person who is working in the corporate world or running my own business or just doing something completely different and doesn't have access to the same resources and information he reassures the reader that this is not the case and that these same techniques can be applied to everyone out there as the principles will remain the same because the common denominator is that we are human beings and it's not got anything to do with money fame success athlete non-athlete that kind of thing he goes a little bit further and says what he's going to do in the forthcoming chapters in the book is outline the sleep key indicators which is going to be something that you can focus on in order to understand how are good or how to set up your sleep in a way that is improved or improving his whole structure for this is called the r90 sleep recovery system and which he says that he is going to be explaining this throughout the the course of the book he then moves on to say something which i believe is the cracks of this whole book and if i could summarize this the whole book in one point it's basically this he says that we should be a approaching sleep in a polyphasic way we should stop thinking about sleep in the number of hours we get per night but rather than the number of cycles of sleep that we get during the night because as you'll learn in the chapters to come sleep is made up of different or many different cycles of the sleep through that are repeated throughout the night and so i just to reiterate i think this is the most important part of what he's saying is that we should start approaching our sleep in a polyphasic way at the end of the introduction he speaks about how the the modern world that we live in has been affecting our sleep and that's why there is room improvement there is room for improvement for a lot of people out there and something that needs to be addressed and this is why he kind of wrote this book and is trying to get this message out to as many people as possible he says that because of the internet becoming such a big part of our lives we are constantly connected always receiving instant messages emails and we always switched on especially with having mobile and smartphones around us all the time in terms of stress management and the the physical factors such as the blue light that comes from these phones these things have a direct impact on our sleep quality and we need to be aware of these so that we can make the necessary adjustments in our lifestyle to combat these new age challenges that we are facing in today's world he just also then lays up a few more things that do have a negative impact on sleep and these things are the myth that surrounds sleep that we should be getting eight hours a night it's not quite that simple as he will outline in the chapters to come he speaks a little bit about caffeine and how kind of issues a warning about this and says that it is something that needs to be managed really carefully and shouldn't be abused and lastly sleeping pulls which is something that way too many people rely on without addressing other issues that could help improve your sleep without having to resort to sleeping pulse so that's it for the introduction lays up everything for the rest of the book but in the next video we will cover the summary of the first chapter where we actually start getting into the real juicy information that he's going to outline in this book so i'll see you another