#244: Ian Dunican, PhD – Sleep & Impact of Weight Cutting

Book: 'Making Weight' - The Ultimate Science Based Guide to Cutting Weight for Combat Sports

Ian is currently the Director and Principal Consultant of Melius Consulting and has a PhD from the University of Western Australia (UWA), where he worked with elite sporting organisations/athletes to optimise sleep, recovery and performance. He is also the Director of Sleep4Performance and an Adjunct Researcher at Monash University, Australia.

Ian has worked with elite and highly trained athletes at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), West Australian Institute of Sport (WAIS), professional teams in Super Rugby, Australian Rules Football, Basketball, Swimming, Ultrarunners and Martial Arts such as Boxing, & MMA.

He is an ultrarunner, completing over 20 ultramarathons to date including the Ultra Trail Australia ~100km (7 times), Leadville~100 miler, numerous other marathons and trail running events. He is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Purple belt and enjoys cross training in wrestling, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and kettlebells. He is now focusing on improving his swimming to undertake open water swimming events in 2018/19.

He was a TEDx Perth speaker in 2017. He has co-authored technical reports, guidelines for industry organisations and authored a number of scientific articles and is a regular reviewer for scientific peer reviewed journals. Ian is the host of Sleep4Performance radio a podcast dedicated to education, knowledge sharing and promotion of the value of managing sleep.

In This Episode We Discuss

• Weight cutting study: impact on sleep
• Does low fibre dieting lead to worse sleep? Effects of caloric restriction on sleep
• Impact of anxiety and nervousness on week of competition
• Brain trauma and sleep
• Demands for sleep with increased training workload
• Impact of late night training