"I would have a bottle of wine beside my bed" - Paulo Costa changed his training schedule to avoid drinking alcohol before bedtime

Paulo Costa said he changed his training hours in order to avoid drinking wine to help him sleep if he had insomnia after a session.

The Brazilian made headlines recently when he revealed he had a whole bottle of wine the night ahead of his middleweight title fight against current champion Israel Adesanya.

According to Paulo Costa, he was struggling to sleep and decided to drink wine to see if that would help him fall asleep. But he ended up drinking the whole bottle.

The effects caused by the alcohol ingestion the morning after were not what Paulo Costa had anticipated, as he alleged to feel 'numb and apathetic' during the fight.

In an interview with Brazilian YouTube channel PVT, Paulo Costa has revealed that he decided to change his training time as he was drinking wine sometimes to help him sleep.

According to one of the interviewers who addressed the issue, Paulo Costa's brother had told him drinking alcohol was authorized by a doctor, but they were modifying training routines regardless.

"It is not a problem. I don't see it as a problem. My doctor has recommended the following: if you train too hard, twice a day, in the morning and night, and if the night's training ends around 10 pm, it is normal that you will get home still full of adrenaline, agitated. It is normal. You trained too much. Your muscles were overloaded. You're still active. So, for you not to sleep too late, take a cold shower, have dinner, and then, if you're still not feeling sleepy after that, you can have a glass of wine to relax and get sleepy," Paulo Costa said [translation by Sportskeeda].

"So, I used to have this routine, in which I was training too hard during the night. I would have a bottle of wine beside my bed, but this bottle would last for a month, three weeks. It wasn't that I was drinking it every day. It was only when I needed it," he revealed.

Paulo Costa was scheduled to fight No. 1 in the UFC middleweight rankings Robert Whittaker on April 17 but had to withdraw from the fight due to a "severe flu." Kelvin Gastelum was booked to fight in his place.

What has changed in Paulo Costa's training routine?

UFC 253 Adesanya v Costa: Weigh-Ins

In the same interview, Paulo Costa explained what has changed in his training routine to help him fall asleep earlier in the night.

"So, what we changed now was: not training so late in the day. So, when it is 11 pm or midnight, I'm already sleepy because I didn't do any physical activity close to my sleeping time. And that's what we have changed. We have one session in the morning and another around 4, 5, or 6 pm at the latest. So when it ends around 7 or 8 pm, I'm not so full of adrenaline," Paulo Costa said.