Late night and breakfast at 14.00. Then Walter Wahlberg threw himself into the hill and came home with the Olympic gold medal in the humpback.
Now he talks about the secret behind success – his changing circadian rhythm.
– I often went to the gym around midnight, says the 22-year-old.
The advanced sleep cycle was of course not the biggest reason behind last winter’s Olympic gold medal, but it did contribute to it.
– I went to the Olympics with a plan for how to set it up and tried to follow it literally. And there, sleep was a big part of it, too. Wahlberg says sleep affects one’s performance, and I totally think it had a huge impact on the outcome.
– I spoke to Sanjay Verma (sleep coach) during the Olympics to make sure this was the right decision, because I came up with the idea myself, but I had to double-check it as a sleep expert so I wasn’t quite out of the house cycling.
logically
Not so Walberg. Even outside and cycling.
– I think it was simply a logical way to set it up as we had evening practice and evening competition, it was during the seven day period we were doing in these times.
The changing routine isn’t revolutionary, but it needs to be done, too.
Walberg did.
– All of our training was around 7-8 pm and the competition was also late. If I were to get up as I usually do in Sweden, around nine in the morning, I would have been tired around seven and eight in the evening.
I tried to sleep until one in the morning or so, then had breakfast at two, then had my lunch around five, before I went out on the slopes a little. Then dinner was at about nine before I went to bed at about two and three at night.
Midnight Activity: Gym
The Beijing Olympics was the first time that Wahlberg adjusted his sleep cycle.
Trinidad and Tobago: What made you want to test that at the Olympics?
– In part, we have, via SOK (Swedish Olympic Committee), sleep training on x number of occasions. I had an idea of how the sleep cycle works and when you have peak performance during the day. It really made sense: If I have to peak at 7 and 8 in the evening, well, I have to get up a lot later than I usually do, or else I’ll peak at 3 or 4 in the day.
TT: What did you do in the last hours of the day, after dinner when the others were sleeping?
– I often went to the gym around midnight. I can tell I was pretty lonely there at the time. There was no soul.
1 of 2Photo: Pontus Lundal/TT
Next goal: World Cup medal
February 5, 2022, the date on which the Olympic gold medal was taken, will be remembered forever. Now he is waiting for hard training for the next season, with a clear goal on the horizon:
– It’s good that I will try to win the World Cup for the first time at the premiere, but then we will have the World Cup next year which is a big goal. I’ve never won a medal in a World Cup, so I’m training hard for it.