Despite knowing the value sleep brings to our performance in sports or everyday activities, the majority of us still don’t get enough sleep.
Quality sleep is the most powerful tool when recovering from physical and physiological stressors.
Sleep is roughly 90-120 minute cycles, and a good night’s sleep will repeat these cycles up to four times without interruptions while allowing you to wake up a the end of a sleep cycle.
Read more: Sleep Is The Foundation To Increased PerformanceSleep And Performance
Not enough sleep will undoubtedly affect performance in athletes by;
- reducing exercise performance
- increasing time to exhaustion
- lower sprint speed
- decrease cardiovascular measures
Lack of sleep can also increase the catabolic state leading to potential muscle loss.
Not getting enough sleep can also reduce immunity functions and lead to a higher risk of infections. Exercising while you are sick can compromise your body’s ability to fight off infections and turn a simple cold or flu into something more serious.
Psychological State
Large amounts of growth hormones are released while you sleep that can’t be while you are awake. These hormones help to aid in tissue regeneration related to increasing memory consolidation.
lack of sleep can decrease motivation;
- wearability
- perception of fatigue
- perceived exhaustion during exercise
- motor learning and memory
How To Apply Sleep
Sleep operates on a sleep dose relationship, and not getting enough sleep will not deliver all the benefits of sleep, leaving you with one or more of the effects listed above.
Too much sleep can also leave you in a state known as sleep inertia.
which can be associated with;
- drowsiness
- memory lose
- disorientation
- fatigue
- and reduce your motor control up to 15 minutes after waking up
How Much Sleep
Everyone is different, so there isn’t a one-fits-all for the amount of sleep required. Depending on one’s stress level, activity level, and diet will all reflect how much sleep is needed.
For the average person, 6-8 hours of sleep seems to be the perfect amount.
For more advanced or higher active athletes, you should aim for 8-10 hours of sleep per night!
How To Aim For Sleep Quality
Having a consistent sleep schedule is more important than most people think! Especially when sleep quality is what you are aiming to achieve.
Going to bed at the same time every night and waking at the same time will help you fall asleep and wake up a lot easier.
About 30 minutes prior to going to sleep, you should have the same set routine that will notify your body that bedtime is coming soon.
For example, this sequence can be;
- watching a light show on tv
- reading
- relaxing hobbies
Try to avoid training in the evening as much as possible.
Caffeinated drinks such as energy drinks, pre-workout, and coffee, should be avoided in the evenings to help your body relax and wind down.
If you must work out in the evening, taking these performance enhancement supplements could make it difficult for your body to go through all the sleep cycles.
Even though alcohol is usually consumed in the evening, drinking within hours close to your bedtime is probably the number prevention of getting quality sleep. Even though it feels like it helps you fall asleep, it’s the most fatiguing to our bodies.
Any form of mediation or taking the time before bed to reduce stress, to be the most relaxed as possible, should be the goal before going to sleep.
Our bedrooms should be the only room in the house that tells our body quiet, dark, and the temperature roughly 19 degrees Celsius.
If you can’t fall asleep within the first 20 minutes of laying down, get up and do something like take a bath, read a book, or watch a television show.
My parents used to tell me to lay there and count sheep if I couldn’t fall asleep. This ancient theory won’t lead to the quality sleep we need to recover when we end up falling asleep, leading to a lot of losing and turning during the night.
stretch out, read a book, take a bath, and try again a little while later.
sleep in once in a while, but avoid oversleeping too much to reduce the chances of sleep inertia
A good time to get more sleep on some nights compared to other, are when you aim to get 8 hours of sleep per night. But come up short on some nights due to your schedule. Looking at sleep as a weekly total instead of a nightly total allows you to make up your weekly average before the end of the week.
Napping
Naps are a great supplement to sleep but should never be used to make up your sleep hours or instead of nighttime sleep.
Naps are not as powerful as going through all your sleep cycles but can aid in similar ways by improving;
- awareness
- increase memory
- daytime article levels
Naps can help with increasing recovery on hard training and stressed days.
Our priority goal is to achieve adequate nightly sleep while only supplementing with naps when needed.
Naping should get 20-30 minutes, while anything less is not enough to help, and too much will lead to sleep inertia.
A recommended way to nap during the day is by drinking a caffeine drink like coffee or energy drink prior to a nap to help alertness upon waking.
Conclusion
Sleep is roughly 90-120 minute cycles, and a good night’s sleep will repeat these cycles up to four times without interruptions while allowing you to wake up a the end of a sleep cycle.
Exercising while you are sick can compromise your body’s ability to fight off infections and turn a simple cold or flu into something more serious.
Too much sleep can also leave you in a state known as sleep inertia.
For the average person, 6-8 hours of sleep seems to be the perfect amount.
Having a consistent sleep schedule is more important than most people think! Especially when sleep quality is what you are aiming to achieve.
Naps are a great supplement to sleep but should never be used to make up your sleep hours or instead of nighttime sleep.