“Cian Healy puts on the lavender diffuser and sleeps on a mat of nails”

Never, ever underestimate the power of sleep.

It's something that scares the shit out of athletes at any level, trying to hit the sweet spot of sleep and desperately trying to avoid sleeping too much. Recovery expert Tom Coleman once told us that every sportsperson should be looking at eight to nine hours of sleep for optimal recovery and that you can't bluff it the night before either.

"You should be looking at it over a week, as opposed to one or two nights before a game," he said. "You want at least five 90-minute cycles - that last cycle is when you dream. The cycles go from light sleep to deep sleep, to deep, deep sleep and it comes back to light sleep again before you wake up. "Ideally, five cycles would do but many pro athletes go through six cycles which amounts to nine hours." "Eight to nine hours is ideal. "If you sleep too much, it will impact on the following night's sleep."

So it's no wonder that professionals, especially, are obsessed with looking after their sleeping patterns. Just like they would eat the right things, do the right stretches, sleeping properly is just another step that needs to be taken to ensure your body is functioning as best it can. On the latest Hard Yards episode, Tadhg Furlong sat down for a fascinating in-depth interview. He spoke about growing up in Wexford, he spoke about hurling, he spoke about training and, yes, he spoke about sleep too. He brings his own pillow with him when he's on camp with the Ireland team but, outside of that, his habits for getting it right aren't drastic. Cian Healy's however? He goes above and beyond.

"Cian Healy has an interesting pre-bed ritual... it works for him, so it's fine," Furlong revealed on the show. "He puts on the lavender diffuser, it spreads a nice smell around the room. He puts the headphones on and he sits on like a mat of nails kind of thing for acupuncture and off he goes - fair play to him."

Listen below from 54 minutes.