Are You Skipping Your Zzzs?
Here is how sleep affects fitness… Health professionals report that chronic insomnia and other sleep disorders are associated with increased sedentary activity. Less sleep can shorten your workouts by time and effort over two weeks.
Restorative sleep has the opposite impact of disrupted sleep, which can lead to increased daily weariness and physical lethargy. A good night’s sleep makes for a more energized and productive day, and you may have seen this effect after a particularly restful sleep cycle.
Getting enough sleep is one of the most crucial factors in recovering from exercise. It can help you get strong and help your muscles recover after a workout. A good night’s sleep improves your overall mental and physical performance, energy, response time, endurance, and desire to work out.
Is sleep important for post-workout recovery?
Napping after a workout has been shown to enhance muscle repair. While you sleep, your body releases the growth hormone essential for muscle tissue repair and growth. This is crucial for gaining muscle mass, improving your performance, and experiencing the health benefits of regular exercise.
Short-term rest and rejuvenation are fundamental to your success at every level. In addition to getting enough sleep and replacing the fluids and nutrients you lose after exercise, you should eat well and drink plenty of water to recover quickly.
Sleep quality in the days leading up to and following your workout is crucial. Some studies have linked increased growth hormone production during deep sleep to enhanced sports performance. Growth hormone promotes lean muscle mass, bone density, and fat loss.
How Lack of Sleep Can Affect Your Workout
Sleeping without interruptions is the goal, but let’s face it: it rarely happens. Nevertheless, getting enough sleep is just as important for your health as eating right and staying hydrated. Not getting enough sleep can have major consequences for your health and your ability to reap the advantages of your workout. So, how do we break bad sleep habits, and does lack of sleep affect workout?
It Slows Down Your Recovery – Muscles can’t repair the damage you do to them during workouts if you don’t get enough sleep. Continued muscle breakdown without rest and recovery prevents muscular growth. It has been suggested that sleep deprivation can bring on aches and pains throughout the body, including the joints.
Affects Your Mood – When we don’t get enough sleep, our brains have a tougher time keeping our emotions in check. It has an impact on our social interactions as well. Sleep deprivation can lead to mood swings and decreased motivation to work out. In the end, this can affect your ability to perform physically.
Increases the Stress Hormone Levels – Short sleep duration is associated with increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Several studies showed that after participants went without sleep, their cortisol levels spiked later in the day when they should be decreasing to help the body wind down for sleep. Lack of sleep causes cortisol levels to rise, increasing fat storage and decreasing the efficiency with which the body uses other soft tissues like muscle for energy, leading to greater muscle loss and fat accumulation.
Decreases the Synthesis of Glycogen – Glucose is a kind of sugar that may be stored and used as fuel by the body. It’s the only sugar the body can metabolize. Before our muscles can use any other sugar we consume, it must first be converted into glucose. During the time we are sleeping, our muscles can store glucose from the blood as glycogen. There are other storage sites for glucose in the body (the blood and the liver), but muscle glycogen is preferable because it generates more energy than blood glucose. Failure to get sufficient sleep prevents your body from refuelling the muscles effectively.
Should you sleep more if you work out?
Regular exercise makes it more likely that you will fall asleep as soon as you lie down, allowing you to clock in 7 or 8 hours of shut-eye each night. Additionally, deep sleep phases, the most vital stages of sleep, are boosted by exercise. During these deeper slow-wave sleep stages, you are less likely to be woken up by external factors. As a result, you’ll get better sleep. Improved immunity, cardiovascular wellness, muscle repair, and regeneration are also benefits of deep sleep. Regular exercise improves sleep quality and addresses the root of many mental and physical health issues.
Conclusion
There is no disagreement with the importance of sleep for exercise recovery. Regular exercise can result in more peaceful sleep, just as getting enough sleep can make you feel more enthusiastic and inspired to work out. Try these methods and techniques in your daily life, and you’ll feel wonderful at the gym or in bed.
Bob Brotchie is a counsellor, mindset consultant and creator of "Conscious Living by Design"™. He writes for Anglia Counselling, is featured on various other websites and introduces us to many guest writers all covering topics related to mental health and wellbeing.
Bob provides bespoke counselling services to individuals and couples in the privacy and comfort of a truly welcoming environment at his Anglia Counselling company office, located near Newmarket in Suffolk, England. Bob also provides professional online counselling, for local, national, and international clients. The therapeutic models offered are bespoke to the client’s needs, especially those in receipt of 'childhood emotional neglect' (CEN), whilst integrating a mindful approach to psychotherapy and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) principles. For clients experiencing trauma and/or phobia, Bob offers EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing).