My sleep routine
Fabien's story · Founder of BYOR

“I slept 8 hours.
Never felt rested.
Now I do.”

What changed wasn't my sleep. It was understanding everything around it. These five habits are my foundation, and your starting point.

My Sleep Routine

The five habits that made the biggest difference: tested, understood and implemented over the years.

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Fabien Combe by the coast in the morning light

Maybe you know the feeling.

18:24"I'm home, but I'm still answering work messages from the couch."
22:10"I'm exhausted, but I don't go to bed. It's the only time of day that feels like mine."
00:07"Finally in bed. If I fall asleep right now, I can still get six hours."
02:33"Awake again. I check the phone. Okay, still five hours to sleep."
07:30"The alarm. I wanted to sleep more. No energy at all."
09:45"Second coffee. Still not really awake."
14:50"And all day I run like this: wired, rushing, never fully there."
Heard from 500+ people in my workshops, trainings and coaching

Some can't switch off at night. Some sleep the full eight hours and still wake up drained. Different lives, different countries. The same pattern.

Break the loop.

My Sleep Routine: the five habits that ended this cycle for me.

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I knew better. I still tried the quick fixes.

My background is in Sports Science, physiology and physical and mental preparation. For fifteen years I helped other people perform: first professional athletes, handball, ice skating, then teams inside companies like McDonald's and Radisson Blu. Later, the work took me to Les Mills in London and the US, and to Active Theory in San Francisco.

But as work became more demanding, I started experiencing more stress, poorer sleep and mornings when I felt tired despite spending enough time in bed.

And I told myself what busy people tell themselves. It will pass. It's just a heavy month. It's not that serious. There's no time to dig into it anyway.

So I treated each symptom separately, with whatever was quickest.

I booked massages.
I tried to relax.
I went to bed earlier.
I tried to sleep longer.

Some things helped temporarily. But I was still addressing the evening without understanding the rest of the day.

Fabien Combe, sports scientist and founder of BYOR

Recovery doesn't begin when you go to bed.

I returned to what I knew best: physiology and neuroscience. The more I studied, tested and applied, the clearer the pattern became.

Sleep is not an isolated eight-hour event. It is influenced by how you start the morning, the timing of light and activity, how your nervous system responds to pressure, how you recover during the day and how you transition out of work at night.

Your night is partly the result of everything that came before it.

The problem was not simply how long I slept. It was how my whole system moved between activation and recovery.

Fabien facing the sunrise over the sea in Malta
The mornings changed first

So I became my own first client. I changed one thing at a time, tested it on my own weeks, kept what worked and dropped what didn't.

Out of that came a practical system built around five connected pillars. Not a perfect routine, but a way to understand which part of my day needed attention first.

Circadian rhythm Stress regulation Movement Recovery Focus & daily behavior
↓ Sleep The outcome of the wider system

While I was building it, I kept going back to the research. And the deeper I went, the more the numbers surprised me. Small, ordinary changes were producing effects most people would call life-changing:

65%
Less fatigue
Low-intensity movement, 3 times a week for 6 weeks.
PubMed →
+32 min
More sleep, nightly
Bright light exposure, across an 11-study meta-analysis.
PubMed →
24%
Less stress
Daily mindfulness practice, in a study of 21,088 users.
PubMed →

Reading numbers like these changed how I saw my own exhaustion. It wasn't a personality flaw. It was a system responding exactly as the science said it would. Which meant it could respond the other way too.

But the studies don't tell you where to start. They don't tell you how to keep it going on a heavy week. And they don't tell you how to adapt any of it to your job, your family, your life. That was the part I had to build.

Then I started sharing it.

People around me noticed the change before I said a word about it. Colleagues, friends, other founders kept asking what I was doing differently. The answers turned into workshops. From 2022, I taught companies, teams and individuals across Europe: in Nice, Riga, Ljubljana and Malta.

Fabien leading a BYOR workshop at Workland in Riga
Workland, Riga
Fabien teaching a BYOR session in a Malta coworking space
Workshop, Malta

I taught everything I had: the tools, the options, the techniques behind each pillar. People came to sleep better, feel less overwhelmed, recover, perform with more consistency. And it worked. The workshops grew, the invitations kept coming.

But one request came back more and more often. People didn't want the full toolbox. They wanted to know which parts were theirs:

"This makes sense. But what should I do for my life?"

That question became BYOR.

BYOR means Build Your Own Routine. It was created because there is no single perfect morning routine, sleep habit or stress-management technique for everyone.

Different work.
Different families.
Different pressures.
Different bodies.
Different starting points.

People did not need another list of tips. They needed to understand where their system stood, what was influencing it and what to change first.

Not more information. Clear direction.

The routine I teach professionals.

Companies book my workshops for powerful insights like these. Today they're yours, free.

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From understanding to action.

STEP 1
See your starting point

Start with the free 2-minute System Check covering sleep, stress, energy and focus.

Reading System Check results on a phone at home
STEP 2
Measure the fuller picture

The complete BYOR assessment combines your context, guided at-home tests and optional wearable data.

Starting the BYOR assessment on a laptop at home
STEP 3
Have it read by a specialist

A trained specialist interprets the results and turns them into practical priorities, habits and a routine suited to real life.

Fabien in conversation with a small group around a table
The free check is a behavioral snapshot and starting point. The full assessment goes deeper with tests and specialist analysis.
Fabien Combe
Fabien Combe
Sports Scientist and Founder of BYOR

Master's degree in Sports Science, specializing in Physical and Mental Preparation.

Former research engineer at the Handibio Laboratory, Université de Toulon.

The same approach I used with athletes and corporate teams, adapted for people with jobs and families.

French · English · Spanish

People who stopped guessing.

"Always tense, thoughts never quiet. After the call everything made sense. 3 clear challenges. I wasn't sure it would work. It did."

SR
Sophie R.45 · Fréjus

"My sleep quality had been concerning me. Even after applying just a few of the suggested daily practices, I already noticed positive changes."

SM
Samara M.36 · Sliema

"I felt I was underperforming but couldn't figure out why. BYOR gave me the why. More focus and less stress. It's a game changer."

MT
Marc T.32 · Paris

The five habits are a starting point.

Want to go further? BYOR helps you understand what your system actually needs first.

Explore BYOR Or get my free sleep routine