Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 949 is my conversation with Dr. Peter Martone, the chiropractor and founder of the Way Better Sleep Academy. We get into how the position you sleep in affects your overall health, why he believes side sleeping can drive shoulder and back pain, and how you can use the third of your life you spend in bed to retrain your body and hold proper spinal alignment. It is a deep, practical conversation about sleep, posture, and pain.
Listen now: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · Listen in the player · Press play in the audio player on this page.
Dr. Peter Martone is a chiropractor and sleep-and-posture expert who founded the Way Better Sleep Academy. He developed a neurostructural approach to health centered on spinal alignment and the position you sleep in, and he created a special pillow designed to help people restructure their neck and spine while they sleep. His work focuses on using the one-third of your life spent in bed to retrain the body.
Dr. Martone's central argument is that the position you sleep in has a major effect on your overall health, and that sleep is governed by your neurology and spinal alignment. He believes you can use your time in bed to retrain the body and hold proper alignment, so that even with limited sleep duration you can get higher-quality, more restorative sleep and perform better the next day.
Dr. Martone, a former side sleeper with a shoulder and hip problem himself, argues that side sleeping can contribute to shoulder impingement and back pain. He recommends shifting away from side sleeping and into a position that arches the neck back, which takes pressure off the psoas major — the only muscle in the body that attaches directly to a disc — and can relieve back pain.
The Way Better Sleep Academy is Dr. Martone's program, broken into multiple parts, that helps people figure out what kind of sleeper they are through a series of tests and then implement his strategies — including a special pillow and changes to sleep position — to improve sleep quality and spinal alignment over time.
Dr. Martone explains that if you spend a third of your life hunched over a computer, you have to use the third you spend in bed to retrain the body to align properly. He pairs sleep-position changes with chiropractic adjustments and proprioception work — balance and body awareness — to hold alignment, break up scar tissue, and address shoulder and back issues at the source.
Dr. Martone emphasizes retraining the neurology through proprioception, the brain's sense of balance and body awareness. He describes development work on a wobble board designed to quantify cognitive functioning, and argues that without maintaining alignment through adjustments and sleep-position changes, you lose balance and accumulate problems over time.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 949 with Dr. Peter Martone is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Press play in the audio player on this page to hear the full conversation about sleep position and spinal alignment.
I have tried just about everything to sleep better — darker rooms, earplugs, every sleep podcast out there. What I had not really focused on was sleep position, and that is exactly Dr. Martone's specialty. As a guy who needs to be sharp on the water and still have something left for my family at the end of the day, I came into this one as a student, wanting him to explain how the way I lie down at night could be quietly working for or against me.
Press play in the audio player on this page to hear the whole conversation.
Dr. Martone's core message is that the position you sleep in has a big effect on your overall health, because sleep is controlled by your neurology and spinal alignment. He argues you do not necessarily need more hours — you need better-quality sleep, and the right position helps you get it. He explains how he thinks about duration versus quality, and why position is the lever most people ignore. Listen to that part of the episode.
Dr. Martone was a side sleeper himself, with a shoulder and a hip problem, and a history of back pain going back to lifting a snowmobile as a kid. He explains how he forced himself into a new position that arches the neck back to take pressure off the psoas major — the only muscle in the body that attaches directly to a disc. For anyone with shoulder impingement or chronic back pain, this is the section to hear. Press play.
This is the idea that reframed it for me. If you spend a third of your life hunched over a computer, Dr. Martone says you have to use the third you spend in bed to retrain the body to align properly. He pairs sleep-position changes with chiropractic adjustments and his special pillow to hold that alignment over time, rather than fighting it every day. Listen to how he puts the pieces together.
Dr. Martone goes deep on proprioception — the brain's sense of balance and body awareness — and describes development work on a wobble board designed to quantify cognitive functioning. His point is that alignment, balance, and neurology are all connected, and that without maintaining them through adjustments and better sleep position, you slowly lose balance and pile up problems. Press play in the audio player above to hear it.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or press play in the audio player on this page.
The day after talking to Dr. Martone, I caught myself paying attention to how I was lying down for the first time in my life. That is the value of this conversation — it makes something you do every single night, and never think about, suddenly visible.
The bigger idea is that you cannot out-supplement or out-hack bad alignment. If you spend your days hunched over and your nights in a position that reinforces it, the body learns the wrong shape. Using your time in bed to retrain it is one of the few levers that is completely free.
Press play in the audio player on this page, or grab Episode 949 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
The Tom Rowland Podcast brings you long-form conversations with the most accomplished anglers, hunters, conservationists, and outdoor professionals in the game. Listen to every full-length Tom Rowland Podcast interview.
Dr. Peter Martone is a chiropractor and sleep-and-posture expert and the founder of the Way Better Sleep Academy. He developed a neurostructural approach to health that centers on spinal alignment and sleep position, and created a specialized pillow designed to help people restructure their neck and spine while they sleep. His work helps people use their time in bed to retrain the body, hold proper alignment, and address chronic back and shoulder pain at the source.
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