Sleep: Almost More Important Than The Workout Itself

This is the part that you all get to rub your hands together. In simple terms, it’s the easy part, and merely involves you putting your head on the pillow and grabbing those elusive hours in bed.

Unfortunately, the above is easier said than one. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently found that around a third of Americans receive less than six hours sleep per night. Well, if you are serious about conquering your fitness goals, that sort of number just isn’t going to cut it.

We’ll get onto some exact figures shortly, but the purpose of this chapter is to educate you about the importance of sleep and just how you can make sure your body gets enough of it.

Why is sleep important for us?

We could quite easily pen a dissertation-style length guide on the importance of sleep. Without it, you are subjecting your body to all types of risks, yet with it you can actually boost your body as well. In short, it’s absolutely essential.

Let’s take a look at the negative side of sleep and what happens when you don’t receive enough of it.

Studies have shown that those of you who aren’t sleeping enough are more likely to have increased body fat, while you are less likely to build lean muscle. It means that your lack of sleep has a direct impact on the shape of your body – as well as the standard emotions that most of us feel such as being unproductive, miserable and just not on top of our game.

Something else which is interesting about not getting enough sleep is what happens after your workout. Sure, the repercussions for the workout the following morning aren’t going to be very productive, but in terms of AFTER your workout the effects are even more surprising.

A lack of sleep really can inhibit the muscle building process, meaning that any work that you have performed in the gym is going to be less beneficial than usual.

The downsides for sleep could go on; everything from your heart to your kidneys is also affected. At the same time, if you are one of the shrewd few who do make sure you get sufficient shut-eye, you can expect a whole magnitude of benefits.

For example, the morning after your great sleep you can expect to perform much better in the gym. Additionally, in the evening, your muscles are going to develop at a much faster rate as sleep promotes the release of HGH which facilitates this process.

There are more general benefits as well; you can expect to be more resilient to basic illnesses like the common cold, while your stress levels should decline as well.

Bearing this in mind, let’s read on and find out just how you can improve your sleep-life balance.

What are the different types of sleep you can have?

Before we get onto the ‘how’ of this chapter, it’s first worth identifying just what forms good sleep. If you can at least understand this, it generally becomes easier to implement any tasks to improve it.

There are two types of sleep, coming in the form of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (Non-REM). These two types are placed in several stages that scientists have found form a typical sleeping pattern:

• Non-REM Sleep Stage 1: This is the initial stage of sleep, usually lasting for up to ten minutes. It’s effectively when you are trying to get to sleep, but you’ve not quite made it.
• Non-REM Sleep Stage 2: This is where things physically take a change. At this point, your heart rate will start to slow down, your body temperature will drop and you generally become sleepier (if that was a scientific term).
• Non-REM Sleep Stage 3 and 4: Things get a little more complicated to understand at this point, as these stages of sleep tend to drop in 30 minute cycles. It’s not the deepest form of sleep you can have (more on this later), but you’re getting there.
• REM Sleep: This is the deepest sleep you can have and if you want to feel fully alert, you’ll have needed plenty of REM sleep through the night. It’ll take the typical person about 90 minutes to reach this stage.

From a fitness perspective, it’s really important to take a look at the Non-REM stages. This is where the body will repair and regenerate muscles and various tissue – meaning that it’s the ideal stage following a workout.

The science behind sleep

The previous section should have hopefully given you a better idea of sleep and the various stages within it.

In truth, there’s so much science that we could delve into here, but we’re going to try and keep it as top-level as possible to help you reach your goals.

The easiest way to look at sleep is through evolution. Thousands of years ago, there was no such thing as alarm clocks or blackout blinds.

Instead, it was all about relying on nature. When the sun rose, it was a direct signal to our bodies that it was time to wake up. At the same time, when the sun set, it was a signal that it’s time to sleep. These signals prompted various injections of hormones to facilitate going to sleep and waking up. In the case of the former, it’s all about the production of melatonin to make us feel even sleepier.

Other signals include your body cutting back on urine production, decreasing your heart rate and body temperature and even lowering your muscle activity.

It’s at this point that you’ll start to realize the problem that most of us are facing. What we have just talked about occurred years ago, when we didn’t have any sort of technology. Now we do, and we have so many devices that not only wake us up but keep us up (think all of your mobile phones that emit light) – it means that your body is being fooled. Tricking it this way is halting your sleep considerably.

How can you make your sleep longer?

We’ve spoken about priorities through this guide, and it’s time to hone in on the subject once again. In short, sleep needs to be your priority and if you can etch this into your day-to-day routine, you will almost certainly sleep for longer.

We don’t necessarily mean about putting sleep at the top of your priorities either; you can affect it via a more indirect approach. For example, if you’re not starting the most important tasks of your day until late in the evening, it stands to reason that your sleep is going to be affected.

At the same time, there are some direct reasons, and the beauty about modern day television is that you can watch the box as you please – rather than how it’s scheduled. Take advantage of this to ensure that firstly, you go to bed earlier.

There are other ways which don’t necessarily link to your priorities as well.

For example, we all know about the effects that caffeine has on our body; it can affect us for more than six hours after you have drunk the substance, meaning that it should immediately be eradicated from your post-lunch routine.

A step that you can take is to not expect the world as well. In other words, saying that you’ll go to bed an hour earlier is far easier said than done.

However, if you can gradually shift your bedtime by fifteen minutes, over time you will get there and your total sleep will benefit as a result. Not only this, but sleeping an hour earlier is tough for your body to get used to. What usually happens to people who adopt this approach is that they will lie in bed for that hour desperately trying to get to sleep. The gradual approach avoids such problems.

How can you make your sleep better?

The previous section talked about improving the length of your sleep, but there are also steps you can take to improve the quality of it.

We’ve already mulled over this first suggestion briefly, but if the message wasn’t loud and clear let’s reiterate the problem with electronic devices. These devices, with their bright blue screens, are just keeping your body awake for longer.

They trick your brain into thinking that it’s time to wake up, and this spells disaster. As such, the first suggestion is to limit your exposure to blue screens, with this including anything from your television to your mobile phone.

If you find that this is really difficult to do with your current lifestyle, there are apps that can help. Some, with F.lux being one example, are able to make the screen mimic a red or orange shade and therefore keep your mind on track.

It might not just be electronics that are wreaking havoc with your brain though. There are various blue lights through the house, and this is why some people might resort to wearing blue blocker glasses or even changing their lightbulbs to ones that emit more of a red shade. Admittedly, these are quite drastic steps, but you will soon experience the difference.

Slightly more traditional techniques include buying blackout curtains or blinds, with this ensuring that your night is spent in complete darkness and there’s going to be no bright shines from the outside disrupting you.

You’ll quickly find that this not only makes you fall asleep more quickly, but also keeps you asleep a little longer in the mornings when you don’t have that natural light seeping through the windows.

If we move away from lighting, your mattress is obviously going to aid with the quality of your sleep as well. For some people, it might be a soft mattress, but for others a hard one will suit your body much better. If you’ve experienced any form of back pain recently, this might be the reason and you should act accordingly.

How can you avoid the groggy feeling in the morning?

This is the section where we revisit those different types of sleep we looked at earlier through the guide.

One of the primary reasons why we feel groggy in the morning is because we simply wake up in the wrong cycle. This makes it difficult for your body to transition from that deep sleep mode, to the wide awake feeling we crave.

It also means that there can be occasions where you have had the longest sleep that you can remember, only to wake up in the wrong phase and to feel even worse than the morning after you only clocked up five hours of sleep.

This is one of those occasions where technology really can come to your rescue. Firstly, you need to eradicate one advanced function from your routine, with this coming in the form of the snooze button. Instead of using this, set your alarm to twenty minutes later than it is (or the amount that your snooze is set to anyway).

One easy way to achieve this is to put your snooze device completely out of the room, so you don’t just roll over in a morning and turn it off. You’ll have to physically get up, which means you’re up and about instantly.

There are further technological suggestions though. We spoke about the concept of waking up in the right phase of sleep, and this is where a sleep cycle app steps in. This is a type of app which asks for the time you need to wake up, before it will gradually wake you up at the most efficient point during a thirty minute window.

Some people will take things a little further from the above and turn to a dawn-simulator. As the name suggests, this is a device which is there to simulate natural light. It’s something that can gradually wake up your body, rather than that screeching alarm sound which comes out of the blue (and probably disrupts one of those crucial sleep cycles).

Once you have woken up, don’t dismiss the concept of a morning walk. Again, it’s all about subjecting your body to more light, which should allow the relevant hormones to flow through your body and just make you feel a lot more awake.

The importance of tailoring your routine to your body clock

Unfortunately, even after reading all of this chapter, not everyone is going to be programmed the same. Some people are classed as morning people, while others work better in the evening. Perhaps surprisingly, just 10% of the population is said to be at their best in the morning, while 20% are better at night. Everyone else, as strange as it may sound, is in the middle and can’t be classed as either.

If you do fall into one of these categories, it just means that you are more awake during these points. If you’ve found this, the best way is to just accept the situation and try and adapt your life accordingly. If you are a morning person, plan all of your workout routine for the morning as it’s just not going to happen later in the day.

It sounds simple and fortunately, it really is.

Does napping work?

While we’re on the topic of sleep, it only feels fitting to talk about naps. Not all countries incorporate this into their culture, but if you have the ability to squeeze one in they can work very effectively.

Some people might suggest they are just for laziness, but this has to be disputed from a scientific perspective. It has been proven that a 90 minute sleep can prompt sufficient REM sleep to recharge your batteries and give you that extra push for the remainder of the day.

If you haven’t slept enough, this approach can be hugely beneficial for you.

Keeping track with a sleep journal

Following on from everything we have covered in this chapter, let’s finish with some more actionable advice. Journals are key to a successful fitness regime and in the case of sleep, they can help enormously.

You might think that you don’t sleep enough, but you don’t know why or any of the details. Therefore, put a sleep journal together which documents your entire sleeping pattern. This can include the likes of:

• The time you woke up
• The time you got out of bed
• The amount of times you hit snooze
• Your routine prior to going to bed
• How long (in rough terms) it took you to fall asleep

Once you are armed with this information, plus the science we have discussed through this chapter, you can start to put together a plan of action. For example, up until now you might not have known that you are partial to snoozing, but after documenting this journal you can really put together your own data and make arrangements to move forward.