How to beat jet lag better than my Buffalo Bills

Sitting in the backyard of my college roommate, two Sunday’s ago I had the great displeasure of watching the greatest team ever created, my beloved Buffalo Bills, look… well, jet-lagged in a nasty loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London, England. Why was watching that game so bad for me? My college roommate lives in Jacksonville.

It was terrible and I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to help. But, alas, it was too late for this game but there is a very important game at the end of the season that is 60% of the time zone change that London is - so let’s get this right next time!

As I read more and more about the methodology the Bills used to cross the Atlantic - I learned they decided to depart Buffalo on the Thursday night before the Sunday game - I thought back to how I looked at and managed time change over my decade of competing in Europe. Our goals were to stave off injury (of which the Bills had A LOT), improve performance (of which the Bills had NOT MUCH OF), and decrease stress (who knows!).

Ultimately, jet lag is a known stressor. (The Mayo clinic breaks down what it is, and provides some tips of their own here.) Time change interferes with your sleep and stresses the body.

If you’re going on vacation, jet lag can steal time away from relaxing and enjoying yourself. But it’s even worse when the stakes are higher and you need to perform, whether that’s for work (like giving a talk or pitch) or athletics (like how I’ll be traveling to NYC for the marathon next month). Particularly for athletes, jet lag poses a real risk to your performance and increases chance of injury. (The research, not surprisingly, backs this up.)

Unfortunately, teleportation hasn’t been invented yet, so if we’re going to perform, we need to have ways of working around the jet lag so it doesn’t get in the way of our success. 

As an athlete, my team and I had a set of go-to strategies that I use to this day. I wish I could have shared these with the Bills before their London loss, but in the meantime, you can look to put them to use on your next trip. 

Here we go: 

Strategy #1: Set your goal.

Anytime we want something to happen, we need to be explicit first about what that goal or intention is.

Likely, your goal is to perform as well as you can, as quickly as you can, when you get to your destination - whether that's for a meeting, for performance in an athletic event, or just to be present with your family and make the most of your vacation. 

Be clear about your goal and know what “success” looks like in this process. Then you can wrap your mind around how to make it happen. When I was bobsledding, those goals were - get back to my normal sleep-wake timing ASAP, stay hydrated, and don’t hold stress about the time change.

Strategy #2: Plan ahead.

If you can, get to your destination with more time than you need. It’s always useful to have at least an extra full day to rest and adjust. 

Ideally, give yourself even more time. The rule of thumb is that, biologically, it takes roughly a day per time zone to adjust. In reality, this often isn’t possible. But there is another strategy you can employ.

For World Cup season I recall leaving from Lake Placid on a Thursday for training starting on Sunday. That didn’t give us a lot of time to settle in. So - my preparations for jet lag needed to start before we ever got on a plane. 

It worked like this: for the six days before leaving for Europe I would go to bed one hour earlier and wake up one hour earlier every single day, while sitting in Lake Placid.

That means by the time I was leaving for Europe, I was going to bed around five o'clock in the afternoon and waking up around two in the morning. Hardcore, I know - but that was the deal back then. 

For the Buffalo Bills, if they still insisted on leaving Buffalo on the Thursday before the Sunday game, I would have recommended players begin to “turn back their clocks” at least three days out. Given that Buffalo-London is “only” five hours, a few hours/days head start likely would have made an immense difference. (I also have no idea if they did anything like this)

Assuming you can’t do this exactly (not many people have the luxury of going to bed at 5 pm, myself included these days - but the Bills as professional athletes certainly could have), you can still apply this strategy to some degree. The more you adjust your sleep-wake time in advance, the less time you should need to adapt at your destination. 

Strategy #3: Have a nap as soon as you arrive.

I read that the Bills left Buffalo Thursday evening, did the normal overnight flight, and got to London in the morning. They then worked out right away with the intention to beat the jet lag. I would recommend the exact opposite.

If you land early enough, the moment you land, go straight to the hotel and take a 90-minute to three-hour nap. Importantly: don’t let yourself sleep all day. You’re aiming for 1-2 sleep cycles and to be out of your hotel room no later than 1pm.

Think of it like having gone out all night and partied, and coming home for a few hours of sleep before starting your day.

After that, move around. My team and I would fly overnight. So once we got to our arrival, we’d nap for a few hours. Then we’d get up and go for a long walk, check out the town, maybe have a workout, have dinner, and so on. 

This allows you to catch up on much-needed sleep and attempt to alleviate just a little bit of the sleep debt you accumulated overnight.

Even if you slept the entire flight, it would not have been very restorative, so this approach acknowledges that your body is behind, gives it just a little of what it needs, but doesn’t overdo it and ruin the next night. It takes discipline to get out of bed after 1.5-3 hours, but you’ve gotten this far in this article so that likely won’t scare you.

Strategy #4: Adjust your mindset: The current time IS the time.

Accept the reality of where you are now. Period. 

Don’t let yourself do what the NFL’s best wide receiver did to himself… this is the Bills’ Stefan Diggs quoted in the Athletic last week after the London game that kicked off at 2pm local time:

“That’s why I got so frustrated on the sideline. Because it’s like… 9 o’clock in the morning and I’m out here sweating, I’m giving it everything I’ve got…I’m like, ‘Damn, why isn’t everything necessarily clicking how we usually click?”

Even if you’re traveling across several time zones, don't tell yourself what time it is back home. Only tell yourself what time it is now, where you are. 

This can be an easy trap to fall into, so you have to be really rigid with yourself. 

Tell yourself: It’s the time where my body is, not the time where my body was. (because, btw, it is!)

If it's 11:00 p.m. on the east coast (Eastern time) and you just flew in from Calgary (Mountain time), don't think about it as 9:00. Tell yourself it’s 11:00. My wife knows this and both laughs at me and respects it. I think.

Ultimately - this is important because your thoughts and actions will follow your internal dialogue.

If nothing else, focus on that. Because even if the other circumstances are beyond your control, you can always choose your mindset.

So - happy time-traveling, enjoy the present, and Coach McDermitt - I’m behind you guys 110% and I’m here for you next go-round. Because this works whether you’re crossing the Atlantic or the flyover states. And the Super Bowl is a solid three-hour time zone from Buffalo this year!

- Steve