Dr. Cheri D. Mah had been talking to the Seahawks rookies for nearly an hour when she closed with a final message.

"Sleep is a weapon," said Mah, a sleep physician and performance expert who works with the Seahawks year-round. "It is a highly underutilized, underleveraged area of performance enhancement. If you're willing to do everything it takes to make yourself the best athlete possible, you'll see these benefits, but you have to give the time and energy to it, just like you do every aspect of your training. If you're not willing to do it, I will tell you that the guy next to you is going to, so use it to your advantage."

Mah, who is based out of the Bay Area and is an adjunct lecturer at the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, is regarded as a leader in the field of sleep and performance, and consults with numerous professional sports teams and professional athletes. This will be her fourth season working with the Seahawks, and while a lot of the work she does with the Seahawks is remote, she does make visits to the team throughout the year, including last week when she talked to the rookie class both as a group and in one-on-one meetings. She'll be back next month to meet with second and third-year players as they continue to build on what Seahawks vice president of health and player performance Sam Ramsden refers to as the team's sleep curriculum.

That curriculum includes not only Mah and Ramsden helping lead the way, but also a multifaceted, interdepartmental task force, aka, the sleep team, made up of director of performance nutrition Andrea Vanderwoude, assistant performance dietitian Samantha Clark, assistant strength and conditioning coach Thomas Garcia, director of personnel development Lamar "Soup" Campbell, and assistant athletic trainer Mackenzie Marques. Those five employees spanning multiple departments act as the boots on the ground, so to speak, for the sleep program when Dr. Mah isn't with the team.

From Seahawks president of football operations and general manager John Schneider to head coach Mike Macdonald to Ramsden and so many others, the Seahawks are an organization that has made a deep commitment to help players perform at their best. Whether it is strength and conditioning or nutrition or, in this case, sleep, the Seahawks are striving to be cutting edge and, to borrow a phrase from Macdonald, chase edges wherever they can to find competitive advantages.

In a sport in which tenths of seconds and inches can be the difference between winning and losing, Mah's research has shown improved sleep, both in duration and quality, can have tangible effects on everything from speed to reaction time to, as studies with the Stanford basketball team showed, improved free-throw and three-point percentages. Mah's work with the Seahawks, building what she calls a comprehensive sleep program, predates Macdonald's time with the team, but is a prime example of the edge chasing the Seahawks do that helped them with a Super Bowl title three months ago.

"Sleep is the number one way to recover," Ramsden said to the rookies before introducing Mah. "Without sleep, without proper sleep, good sleep, quality and quantity, a lot of your dreams and a lot of your programs and processes aren't going to happen the way that you want them to. It's foundational."

During her hour-long session with the rookies, Mah explained to players how much a lack of sleep can affect them, but also the positives that come with proper sleep, from establishing a good routine to the benefits of paying back sleep debt when they do have a stretch of suboptimal sleep.

"Sleep affects every aspect of performance," Mah explained prior to her meeting with players. "Sleep is so critical cognitively, for our physiology, for our physical performance. On the cognitive domain, we know adequate sleep is important for reaction time, for decision making, for learning and memory, for us to be able to respond under pressure, for us to be able to have good mental health. We need that time every single night for our brains to be able to be restored. From the physiology standpoint, it helps us prevent injuries, it helps us not get sick, it helps our hormones to be balanced appropriately—all these physiological processes, temperature regulation, those are all regulated during sleep. Then when you think about the on-field performance with these players—the difference between them is so marginal—sleep can make a huge difference in terms of your reaction time, your sprint speed, your accuracy. There are a number of studies that demonstrate specific on-field performance."

While Mah addressed the team, rookies were engaged, taking notes, and asking questions on everything from the benefit of naps to a question of if there's such a thing as too much sleep to her thoughts on mouth tape. The Seahawks rookies embracing this new part of their offseason program aligned with what Mah has experienced in her time working with an organization that strives to be at the cutting edge of player performance.

"It's been a really great experience working with the organization from all levels," Mah said. "From John Schneider supporting the work to having a good relationship with Mike Macdonald, who really values specific travel strategies, how we're thinking about body clock on the road—he has a phenomenal road record—to what I've been building with Sam (Ramsden) for a comprehensive sleep program to really optimize sleep and recovery in a way that hasn't been done in the NFL."

For the Seahawks, who frequently are among the league leaders in miles traveled during a season, playing multiple games every year in the central and eastern time zones, managing sleep has been a big factor in their road success. The Seahawks have left Seattle on Friday when traveling east for years, dating back to Pete Carroll's long tenure to the team, and Mah's research helped validate that schedule when Macdonald took over. And while a ton of factors go into road success, managing the challenges of getting quality sleep on the road in various time zones has been a factor for the Seahawks, who are 15-2 on the road over the past two seasons, including 8-0 in games that kick off at 10 a.m. Pacific Time.

"It has been wonderful that Mike Macdonald is open to our recommendations," Mah said. "We look through the schedule together, try to have conversations about what is feasible or not, and the best strategies given the constraints and other factors that need to be weighed."

In Ramsden's nearly three decades with the Seahawks, working his way up from associate athletic trainer to head athletic trainer to his current role that has him oversee an integrated approach to player health, performance and recovery, he has seen the NFL, and the Seahawks in particular, evolve in significant ways when it comes to player health and performance. One of the more recent developments in that field has been the increased emphasis on sleep science, and the team's year-round work with Mah is one of several examples of the organization's commitment to pursuing every competitive advantage it can when it comes to helping players be their best.

"To use one of coach's sayings, it's old-school methods with new-school principles," Ramsden said. "He gets it in terms of how important sleep is… We're Just trying to help understand how we can help our players with sleep hygiene. And that evolved into travel and how our body clock can be affected by how much we travel. (Mah) has been really helpful in terms of doubling down on what our traveling routine is.

"There's good science behind it. That's one thing that's important to Mike, if he doesn't know something, he wants to know it. He's super curious that way. Who are the experts, who are the people that can help us?... Sleep is a very simple, very obvious edge to chase, but it's a pretty elusive edge, because it's often sacrificed."