High-performance individuals know that optimal sleep during the night delivers a reward of optimal performance during the day. Nowhere is this more visibly manifest than with elite athletes whose bodies have to perform at peak, and on display to the world. Sleep is the secret ingredient that top-tier athletes incorporate as an active part of their training regime, the time during which the body grows most productively in response to the training.
The handmaiden of that perfect sleep, for many well known athletes, is a custom-created bed, made exactly to fit their bodies, their rhythms, and their ambitions. This is why some of the most famous have chosen to invest in a Hästens bed as the high-performance partner in their careers.
Maria Sharapova is a prominent advocate for luxury sleep, and invested in a Hästens bed in 2004. The five-time Grand Slam tennis champion was a teenager starting out at the time, and has called the custom bed a considerable investment—but the correct sleep was non-negotiable. As her career advanced and she could commission the finest in luxury bedding, she found she already had it, and continues to sleep in the same Hästens bed today.
Why Sleep?
Why do athletes regard sleep as so important? Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed the secret long ago as the youngest ever Mr. Olympia. The young man from Austria, who redefined muscle perfection in the bodybuilding world, says, “You grow when you sleep, not when you train.”
Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the world’s greatest footballers, and a Hästens owner, understands sleep recovery so well that he employs five 90-minute sleep cycles throughout the day, meshed in with a double training regimen. In this way he takes advantage of the body’s natural peaks and stages of sleep. And Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world, also found his sleep recovery in the perfect Hästens bedding, deeming it a necessity to protect his spine from the severe compression of his intense sprinting.
Zlatan Ibrahimović also values the optimal spinal alignment of a custom crafted Hästens mattress, as well as the temperature and moisture regulation provided by the layers of luxury bedding materials. And legendarily, when the football star left his native Sweden to join Ajax Amsterdam, he insisted that his Hästens bed come with him.
For many high-performance athletes, sleep turns out to be not a luxury but a necessity. Basketball legend LeBron James, who famously spends over a million dollars each year on maintaining his body in peak condition, calls sleep his “number one tool.” As a 6′ 9″ man, James requires custom beds simply to accommodate his size, and has often pointed to the damage that can result from improper bedding while traveling during tournaments.
Sleep, then, is the recovery, the training, the growing, and the way forward. Many athletes and gold-medal achievers sleep at least 10 hours each day, often supplemented with strategic short naps. And fashion models—another kind of high performer—have long shared that sleep is the vital ingredient that gives a natural beauty and radiance that cannot be derived from any other source, in any other way.
All of these extraordinary people are sensitive to sleep cycles, as well as the need to create the perfect environment for sleep: a darkened room, temperature and sound regulation, and winding down at least 90 minutes beforehand – avoiding all electronic screens, for example. And of course, the best possible sleeping platform on which to lay the body down.
Why Hästens?
Without specifically seeking it, Hästens has become as iconic in the world of sports as the top-tier athletes who mention the name in most discussions of sleep optimization and luxury bedding. At 170 years, Hästens is the oldest bed maker in the world, a family firm in Sweden hosting generations of craftsmen with skills that cannot be put into a manual, that can only be taught and learned.
Some athletes find Hastens from a search for a bed that will fit their size. Most are also seeking the deep sleep for recovery and growth that cannot be disturbed by static electricity, physical discomfort to the body, temperature or perspiration fluctuations—in short, the perfect sleep. Only a custom mattress created with layers of the world’s finest natural materials (horsehair, wool, cotton) can hold the body undisturbed and in consistent, luxurious comfort through the sleep cycles.
And also through the years. Maria Sharapova sleeps on a bed that may even become an heirloom, as so many of the Hästens beds have, over time. With beds and mattresses created from literally hundreds of craftsmen-hours for each unique specification, a Hästens bed can endure for half a century, as many have, and many will. And longer.
Most high-performance individuals in this world are not famous, or public. The generations-old family firm of Hästens offers service to a discreet clientele, and has not sought identity in any particular niche. Even so, renown has accrued naturally in the athletic world, from the interviews of many athletes and star performers, known by millions.
Names of the world’s finest bed manufacturers can be counted on one hand, and in discussions of high-performance sleep recovery, custom bedding and luxury sleep, the name of Hästens arises inevitably in the conversation. Each athlete is unique, and each Hästens bed is created to match that uniqueness. Each bed takes hundreds of hours of craft, with each spring hand-positioned into place, and each layer of organic material settled in turn. And all this, offered for 170 years—so that the sleeper can fall asleep tired, and wake up eager. That is the Hästens contribution.
When Michelangelo revealed his statue of David, and was asked how he had created this wonder of the Renaissance world out of a block of marvel, he famously replied, “I took away everything that wasn’t David.”
We will say that a similar thing has happened with top athletes in their quest for the perfect recovery sleep: when they take away the compromises and obstacles to luxury sleep, what remains is Hästens.
