How many of you have thought about your pillow having an impact on your performance in the gym?
I really hadn’t thought about it until I heard of the Technogel Sleep To Perform pillow.
At first glance the Technogel pillow looks a little strange. It’s made by Dr. Scholl’s, the shoe insert company. I suppose if they know how to create comfort for the feet, they can learn to create comfort for the head and neck as well.
I went with the Classic Technogel pillow because it was the thinnest pillow in the Technogel line. I try to sleep with my head in a neutral spine position (rather than the propped up head position that a lot of pillows promote).
When the Technogel pillow showed up at my door, it was packaged in a very heavy duty, nice glossy box, that had a high end look. It was also very heavy for a box filled with a pillow.
When I unpackaged the pillow, I was surprised to find that the pillow was the source of all the weight. It’s a very dense, and heavy pillow.
When handling the pillow, it felt very similar to foam. I was excited to use the pillow for sleep, but after reading the instructions, I was informed that I should let the pillow settle for a day before using it.
So, I struggled through one more night with my old fake feather pillow.
The Review
I’m willing to do almost anything (that’s safe and healthy) to improve my performance, so if a pillow can help, I’m all in!
Rather than just giving a “wow this pillow feels great” review, I decided to get scientific, and track my sleep via the iPhone app MotionX. The MotionX app is able to tell you how much sleep you get per night. It even measures the vibrations of your body to tell if your sleep is deep or light sleep. I had been using the MotionX app for a few months prior to getting my hands on the Technogel performance pillow, which meant that I had a baseline already recorded.
When my head hit the Technogel pillow (on night two) it comfortably sunk in, and my neck immediately relaxed.
I told you I was going to get technical, and geek out a bit on this review, so here goes…
In the chart below you’ll see that my deep sleep numbers ramped up from day 2 unit day 6. On day 7, and 8 I messed up my sleep numbers by consuming alcohol.
I’ve found that I never sleep as well if I’ve consumed any alcohol.
I kept those days in my deep sleep average, but if I were to remove them, my average deep sleep per night with the Technogel pillow would have gone up to 4.68 hours per night!
You’ll also notice that I get about the same average number of sleep hours each night. I usually force myself to sleep for 8-9 hours per night. I do this if I’m sleeping well or having trouble sleeping. Gotta rest up!
Conclusion
As you can see… my deep sleep increase from 3.98 hours of deep sleep per night with my old pillow to 4.47 hours of deep sleep per night when using the Technogel pillow. That’s an increase of 0.49 hours of deep sleep per night. Or, almost a half hour of extra deep sleep per night. That’s almost 3.5 extra hours of deep sleep per week!
The Technogel pillow tagline is #SleepToPerform. Well, there are a ton of factors that go into you performing well in your sport, and sleep is a HUGE factor. So, if your pillow is increasing the amount of deep sleep that you get, you can be sure that you’re going to recover faster, and perform better.
The Technogel pillow has proved to me that it’s the real deal (see the chart). I give it two thumbs up, and think you should try it for yourself.
If you have any questions about my Technogel pillow review, let me know.
Now get outside and have fun by working hard! 🙂
