Taylor Fritz Investing In ‘Secret Tool’ For Training: Eight Sleep

American tennis stary Taylor Fritz believes sleep performance is a growing—and sometimes untapped—opportunity for elite athletes. His conviction comes strong enough that he’s signed on as an investor in Eight Sleep, a 10-year-old company focused on sleep fitness.

“Sleep is a major topic of discussion for professional athletes today,” the World No. 13 tells me. “Eight Sleep is truly leading the change with their focus on sleep fitness and viewing sleep to be just as important as any other tool used for training and recovery. Sleep should be optimized in order to perform at your best.”

The Fritz introduction to the company started about a year ago when on his own he tried out an Eight Sleep pod at his home in Florida, looking to enhance recovery from travel and training. “I had seen how it was becoming a secret tool for so many athletes who I truly admire,” he says, “and wanted to see for myself how I could amplify my sleep and performance, since I am so often traveling to tournaments and dealing with jet lag.”

He liked what he felt so much that after a few months he contacted the company about working together. “Almost immediately after making the switch to Eight Sleep it was clear that the pod offers an extraordinary sleep experience,” he says, “and I wanted to be a part of the mission and movement around helping people become more sleep fit.”

Matteo Franceschetti, Eight Sleep co-founder and CEO, and Fritz announced the investment partnership in March. “I have so much admiration for all these athletes,” Franceschetti tells me. “I know they wouldn’t use a product that doesn’t really make a difference. Every athlete we work with, they have been using the product for a meaningful amount of time.”

MORE: Why Taylor Fritz Signed With Hugo Boss

That includes hundreds of players from professional tennis, the NFL, Formula 1 drivers, Crossfit and Olympians. Having Fritz sign on as an investor shows he’s dedicated to the company and truly believes in its potential. “These guys have so many opportunities and at the end of the day, they have to cherry pick as an investor and that means a lot to us and to our users,” Franceschetti says.

Fritz says he’s willing to invest in brands that he believes in and genuinely uses. “I plan to use that same lens as I continue with any future brand partnerships in my career,” he says.

Franceschetti says athletes are beginning to look at sleep as a dynamic activity, akin to nutrition and fitness. Putting the time and effort into orchestrating sleep, the same way athletes plan out diet and training blocks, can offer performance benefits. Eight Sleep helps with that by offering something different in the sleep space, claiming 30% better sleep as defined during clinical studies by fewer wakeups during the night, fewer tosses and turns and more time in the restful REM stage.

The pod product form Eight Sleep offers a new approach to tracking sleep metrics and working to impact sleep quality. Along the way, the user never has to wear any devices—a requirement Franceschetti had since the early days of creating the company. The pod features a mattress cover that can install over any mattress and fits under bedsheets. It connects to an in-room pod and an app. But it is the mattress cover that does the heavy lifting. Eight Sleep tracks two different people in the same bed, using 20 biometric and environmental sensors to measure what time they went to bed, what time they woke up, the sleep stages, number of tosses and turns, raspatory rate and heart rate. It gives users a “360-degree picture of your health and sleep without you wearing anything,” Franceschetti says. “You don’t have to do anything but go to bed the rest of your life and get better sleep.”

Instead of forcing the user into an experience that starts with putting on a wearable and ends with data in the morning, Eight Sleep offers a fresh perspective. “For us the data is the starting point,” Franceschetti says. “Once we have your data, we do things for you.” Eight Sleep can adjust temperature in real time during the night to tune sleep and use vibration and thermal cues to wake up the sleeper. He says they will continue to add new environmental controls based on biometrics.

“Even though there are so many wearables out there now that track sleep,” Fritz says, “I think more and more athletes—in tennis and across all sports disciplines—will begin to tap into innovative sleep technology like Eight Sleep that provide actual solutions on improving their game and sleeping better.”

Franceschetti says the ability to tune the temperature—heating and cooling each side of the bed separately—is based on sleep preferences and biometrics. He notes that the idea your body should stay the exact same temperature all night is misguided, as your body temperature drops as you fall asleep and starts rising as you wake up. “We are not reinviting the wheel,” he says, “but helping you to do what Mother Nature is requiring us to do.”

When starting the company, Franceschetti says they focused on impacting sleep in a way that high achievers, whether business executives or athletes, would be drawn to. Soon they had athletes buying the product. Franceschetti remembers a time an NFL quarterback purchased Eight Sleep and started talking about the product to the media, all without them knowing. That was happening with Formula 1 drivers too.

“Sleep is absolutely essential for professional athletes, especially in tennis with our grueling training schedules, multi week-long tournaments and global travel nearly year-round,” Fritz says. “Sleeping on the pod helps my body recover much faster than I have ever experienced during a training block, and I recognize how much of a game-changer the autopilot technology is. Not only did it help my body feel more alert and ready to perform, but it also improved my mental game. It’s been an incredible tool for my performance over the past year.”