Strength and Recovery – How Sleep Plays an Important Role

When people are trying to build strength or improve their performance, they often focus on the training aspect and nutrition, but few truly understand how important sleep is in the equation. Sleep is not only when the body releases a number of hormones necessary for wellbeing and muscle repair, but it also affects your mind and body’s functions on multiple levels. Let’s take a look at why sleep is so important for strength and recovery, and how to improve your sleep quality for better results.

Why Good Sleep is So Important

Sleep is vital for humans, even more so than food. As a matter of fact, the longest someone was ever able to live without sleep was eleven days. However, humans can last for weeks without food. 

Rest is a crucial part of training, and overused muscles do not only perform poorly but are more prone to damage and injury. You also can’t get consistent gains without good rest and sleep.

Sleep is when most of our human growth hormones are secreted. Growth hormones are essential in the repair of muscle tissue, but they also affect bone density. This also affects your body’s ability to burn fat, and build muscle.

The Correlation Between Sleep and Performance

If you’re a performance athlete, sleep has been proven to significantly increase performance, and sleep deprivation has also been proven to affect it negatively. Some of the negative effects of poor sleep include less glycogen production, which is essential for endurance, slower muscle recovery, and a sharp increase in the production of cortisol, the stress hormone.

In one study, it was shown that a team of basketball players were able to increase their performance and accuracy by increasing their average sleeping time by 2 hours. Another study found that sprinters were able to run faster with increased sleep.

Tips for Athletes Looking to Improve Sleep

Whether you’re an athlete, or someone looking to get in shape, there are some things that you can do to improve your quality of sleep. Some might require that you change your habits or environment.

One of the first things you have to do is make sure that your room is conducive to sleep. And to achieve this, you have to start with where you’ll be doing most of your sleep: your mattress.

If you’re trying to get in shape for this summer, and your mattress is getting old, then you should definitely consider buying one during the Presidents Day Mattress Sale. Not only are there tons of specials during that time, but that would be the perfect occasion to switch to something like a memory foam mattress for instance. 

These mattresses are some of the best for recovery because of the way they were made. Memory foam mattresses are made to be softer around areas that generate more health, like aching muscles, for instance. Less pressure is applied to these areas as a result. Other parts also get the support needed as these really envelop the body and distribute weight in a way that no part of the body has to support more than it can.

Another thing that you should look out for is when you train. Training right before sleep is a bad idea, as lots of cortisol is being released when working out. Exercise also releases adrenaline, another sleep disruptor. So, make sure that you do not do any rigorous exercises within 2 hours of going to sleep.

Now that you know how important sleep is to your training routine, make sure that you do everything in your power to get the best sleep that you can. Prepare to make the commitment, and readjust your lifestyle accordingly.