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Julie Ertz speaks on the value of sleep and recovery in being an elite athlete

USWNT midfielder and two-time World Cup Champion Julie Ertz joined Yahoo Sports to talk about training with her husband, Philadelphia Eagles TE Zach Ertz, during the pandemic. Ertz also explains how Sleep Number has helped her to get better nightly recovery that allows her to perform her best on the pitch.

Video transcript

JULIE ERTZ: Hi, I'm Julie Ertz, a midfielder for the US Women's National Team and two-time World Cup champion, heading to the Olympics.

I didn't realize how much I'm so used to my entire life being on a schedule of just, you do this, then this, then this. And so it was great for Zach and I to just find a regimen that worked great for us. And so we got to train together. Normally, we get to once in a while, but usually, once we're in season, we have to do very different things. So It was really fun to be able to learn what he does. And I'm not so much sure that he took anything that I do into his regimen, but I did learn a couple other things as well.

But I mean, it really was, for us, finding what our regimen is, between working out, sleeping, nutrition, really just everything, even the mental side that comes with the game, and knowing that, is there an Olympics, is there not? So having him support me was great throughout the whole time as well.

We do compete a lot. We play a ton of games. Our family loves to play games. We'll have small, random stuff, like I know-- We work with Sleep Number as well. So they'll have technology that you can compete who sleeps well, who recovered well.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is recovery. I mean, obviously, for me, coming off of a slight injury, as well, sleep is obviously the number one. So in the past three years, being able to work with them to really try and focus on how we can get every-- That's Zach and my goal every time. It's like, how can we be better? How can we get better on the field, how can we get better off the field? And obviously, sleep is just so big in that recovery. That, nutrition, we've just been pushing ourselves to try to be as prepared as possible. And so yeah, thankful to Sleep Number and their Sleep IQ technology to be able to help find that out for us as well.