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Exercise, Fitness, and Sleep

Maybe you’re training for a triathlon. Or perhaps you’re just trying to shake a few extra pounds you’ve acquired over the year. Either way, professional athlete and amateur jogger have something in common – an important need for sleep.

For the recreational athlete – whether a walker, runner, weight trainer, or softball player – sleep is tied both to your motivation and your goals. Studies have shown that by simply getting seven to eight hours of sleep each night it is easier for people to motivate themselves to work out. When you wake up refreshed, you have the energy to get up and get going.

 

The best way to make sure you allocate enough time to workout, and rest up, is to begin to think of sleep as part of fitness training. Try to set aside eight hours out of your twenty-four hour day for ‘fitness-related’ matters. Eight hours! Don’t panic. Of that eight, set aside seven to seven and a half for sleep. Save the other half hour an hour for a workout. That leaves you sixteen more hours to eat, spend time with friends and family and work.

 

Keep a log to keep you honest. Record both your workouts and how much sleep you’re getting. You’ll find when you get enough sleep, you’ll have no trouble getting beyond the three-week mark where many people give up on their workouts and go back to a sedentary lifestyle.

 

For the disciplined athlete who already works out, sleep is equally important. Recent studies have linked sleep to athletic performance, which makes it a hot topic for everyone from Olympic hopefuls to those competing in the occasional weekend 10K.

 

Sleep deprivation for athletes has been attributed to a number of performance-inhibiting factors. Among them:

• Less efficient glucose metabolism – you simply don’t burn energy as well
• Heightened levels of cortisol – this ‘stress hormone’ has been connected to memory impairment, insulin resistance and reduced tissue-repair (muscle recovery) in athletes
• Psychomotor vigilance – simply put, your mind isn’t as sharp or focused and sustained attention is more difficult. You can’t have your ‘head in the game’ without enough sleep

Just how significant an impairment are we talking about? By some indicators, athletic response time can be reduced by a whopping 75% during periods of sleep deprivation. Cardiovascular performance can be diminished by upwards of 11%, which over the course of a marathon or regulation soccer game makes a big difference.

 

Sleep deprivation can sneak up on athletes. If your body needs eight hours a night and you only get six, you can accumulate 28 hours of sleep loss in just two weeks. It takes 30 to manifest the cardiovascular impairment referenced above. Mental performance has been shown to deteriorate twice as rapidly as physical performance. For athletes this means your head starts checking out of the game before your body does. So you may feel okay physically, but mentally you are losing your attentiveness and responsiveness.

 

As with the amateur athlete, professional athletes need to recognize the importance of sleep and schedule it into their physical training regimen. Without committing to getting enough sleep, you risk un-doing many of the benefits of your commitment to training.

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