Athlete Sleep & Performance

Sleep for athletes and performance

Christine Mason, PhD, DBSM brings behavioral sleep medicine, sleep psychology, and circadian science to individual athletes, men's and women's teams, and sports organizations. Work begins with individualized assessment, not a generic sleep plan.

Discuss Team or Organization Work Clinical Care for Athletes

Four pathways

Clinical treatment and organizational work are distinct

Individual athletes and families

Clinical behavioral sleep medicine for an athlete with a sleep concern, beginning with an individualized assessment. This is clinical treatment, available by telehealth in Georgia, Michigan, Florida, and New York through Dr. Mason's full state licenses, and in participating jurisdictions through her PSYPACT authorization. Patients must be physically located where she is authorized to practice.

Schedule New Patient Appointment

Men's teams and athletes

Team education and consultation on training and competition schedules, travel, recovery, performance arousal, sleep regularity, caffeine and alcohol, injury recovery, circadian timing, wearable interpretation, and recognizing sleep-disordered breathing risk.

Sleep performance consulting

Women's teams and athletes

Sleep-performance education and consultation informed by women's sleep expertise: menstrual-cycle and hormonal influences on sleep, iron and restless legs considerations, recovery, travel, individual variability, and pregnancy and postpartum considerations for adult athletes where relevant.

Women's sleep in clinical care

Coaches, teams, and organizations

Consulting, workshops, education, program development, and sleep-performance strategy for athletic departments, professional teams, and sports organizations. This is organizational consulting, not clinical treatment of individual athletes.

Sleep performance consulting

What the work covers

Where sleep science meets the athletic calendar

Competition-night insomnia and arousal

Difficulty falling asleep before competition, racing thoughts, performance worry, and trouble winding down after late games. Behavioral sleep medicine offers structured, evidence-based approaches, including CBT-I components where appropriate.

Schedules, travel, and circadian timing

Early practices, late games, time-zone changes, and jet lag. Circadian science informs light exposure, sleep timing, and travel plans built around the actual competition schedule.

Recovery, regularity, and sleep opportunity

Sleep regularity, sleep extension, strategic naps, caffeine timing, and sleep during injury periods, considered alongside training load and the athlete's real life.

Wearable sleep data

Interpreting consumer sleep data in context: what wearables measure well, what they estimate, and when tracking itself starts to work against sleep.

Phones, social schedules, and routines

Nighttime phone and social-media use, social schedules, and pre-sleep and pre-competition routines, approached through behavior change rather than rules alone.

Recognizing possible sleep disorders

Not every sleep problem in an athlete is a scheduling problem. Persistent insomnia, loud snoring or breathing pauses, restless legs, or excessive sleepiness may need clinical evaluation and coordination with a physician.

Common questions

Athlete sleep questions

Who specializes in athlete sleep in Georgia?

Christine Mason, PhD, DBSM, founder of Sleep & Change Specialists, is an Atlanta-based health psychologist board-certified in behavioral sleep medicine. She works with individual athletes clinically by telehealth in Georgia, Michigan, Florida, and New York under full state licensure, and in participating PSYPACT jurisdictions. She works with teams and sports organizations through education and consulting.

How is this different from sleep coaching?

Behavioral sleep medicine is a clinical specialty. Work with athletes draws on sleep psychology, circadian science, health psychology, and behavior change, and includes recognizing when a sleep concern may be a sleep disorder that needs medical evaluation.

Do you work with women's athletic teams?

Yes. Women's teams and athletes are a deliberately developed area, connected to Dr. Mason's broader women's sleep expertise, rather than an adaptation of programs built for men's sports.

Do you work with men's teams?

Yes. Education and consultation for men's teams address schedules, travel, recovery, performance arousal, sleep regularity, caffeine and alcohol, injury periods, and sleep-disordered breathing risk.

Can an athlete with insomnia receive treatment?

Yes, through the Sleep Clinic. Athletes receive the same individualized behavioral sleep medicine assessment as any patient, and treatment may include CBT-I. No specific performance outcome is promised.

Sleep Like the Pros for student athletes and professionals Speaking for athletic audiences Insomnia and CBT-I

This page is educational. Sleep strategies do not guarantee specific performance results, and individual needs vary. Concerns about a possible medical sleep disorder should be evaluated by a physician.