SLEEP: It’s Importance and How to Improve it
Within the athletic performance field, everyone is always asking, “what is the next best thing I can do to improve my athleticism?” Often, people go searching for crazy new training techniques and fancy supplements when the best performance enhancing supplement is something free of cost available to every single person.
Sleep is something every single person needs, though, most need a lot more of it than they think. For an athlete training to reach their performance goals, the recommendation is 8-10 hours of sleep every single night. Most athletes, specifically middle school, high school, and college level, have very poor sleeping habits for a myriad of reasons; they often do not know the importance of sleep, have zero clue they do not currently get good sleep, or are unsure how to improve their sleep. Today, I will be explaining the importance of sleep, how to improve your quality of sleep, and what to do if you do end up with a bad night’s sleep.
How it Affects You
So, we know sleep is important and that we need a lot of it, but how important is it really? Sleep is responsible for performance markers such as perceived exertion, pre-exercise muscle glycogen stores, cognitive processing speed and accuracy, and recoverability. Sounds like a lot, right? That’s because it is.
Perceived exertion is how much effort it FEELS like a person is giving when they perform an exercise/drill. If an athlete feels like they are giving more effort than normal, they will reduce the amount of force they are producing, essentially slowing them down and making them less powerful. It also reduces the amount of work an athlete is capable of in a given training session or competition, meaning they’ll perform worse and get less out of it. This drain of energy can also be attributed to the reduced levels of pre-exercise muscle glycogen.
Muscle glycogen is essentially the sugar in your body that is ready to give you energy quickly. If this stored energy is reduced, an athlete will fatigue faster and be less capable of prolonged effort. Regardless of their perceived exertion, less energy means less work. Less work means smaller improvements. Believe It or not, these sugar stores in your body are your brains primary source of energy as well, so this reduced store will affect cognitive processing and accuracy as well.
An athlete’s cognitive processing speed is simply how fast they are capable of receiving information, processing said information, and moving their body specifically in reaction to the information. The accuracy is how coordinated the reaction is. So, as an athlete slows down their brain, their reactions get slower and less appropriate for a given situation. The accuracy is reduced not only in things like throwing accuracy for a baseball player and serve accuracy for a volleyball player, but with how accurately they can position their body as well. With less control of their body, an athlete will put their body into positions during high speeds that they aren’t used to or prepared for, which can cause chronic and acute injuries.
Sleep is the best method of recovery for a myriad of reasons. Avoiding injuries altogether is a big goal of recovery in performance training. If an athlete is capable of accurately putting their body into strong and safe positions during performance, a lot of injuries can be prevented. But sleep does so much more than just keep an athlete accurate. All of our body’s hormones that are required for growth in muscle/soft tissue and increases in strength are released while we sleep. Essentially, you cannot recover from a workout while awake, which is a major reason sleep is the best performance enhancing supplement. While we sleep our body releases things like human growth hormone, testosterone, and IGF-1. These hormones go to work and repair our body, making us stronger and healthier, but only in our sleep.
HOW TO IMPROVE SLEEP QUALITY/DURATION
So now you know why sleep is so important but knowing is only the first step. Now it is time to go get long, quality sleep. Athletes often times struggle falling asleep at night, staying asleep, and getting enough total sleep even if they try. So let’s talk, how.
Falling asleep is a lot more like playing your sports than you know; you play the way that you practice. If you constantly scroll through tik toks until 2am or drink an energy drink at midnight to finish the paper you procrastinated, your body is going to become used to what you are “practicing.” It is hard to kick this habit once you’ve created it. What you need to do now is practice good bedtime habits. A solid bedtime routine will help your brain know its time for bed and help your body fall asleep and STAY asleep.
A good bedtime routine is all about consistency. Good sleep comes from consistently falling asleep about the same time every single night. If you “miss” your bedtime, your body essentially panics and assume you’re in some sort of danger. This panic releases a bunch of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that make it almost impossible to fall asleep and even harder to recover during the sleep you get. So once you set a consistent time, you need to piece together a consistent routine.
A routine will help trick the brain into releasing melatonin; a hormone that puts our body into good deep sleep. You are simply conditioning your brain to associate a certain result (sleep), with a certain pattern (your bedtime routine). Just dedicate 15-30 minutes each night where you perform a handful of tasks before bed that help you calm down and get ready for the night. This can be anywhere from normal hygiene to meditation or reading. This routine should not involve blue light, (i.e., cell phones, TVs, or computers). This blue light that devices project elicits a response in our brain telling us to wake up because it thinks its daylight. You should also make sure your room is cool, dark, and quiet. Simple white noises such as a fan are okay but nothing stimulating such as music or a tv show playing in the background. This keeps the brain alert and decreases the quality of the sleep. Other factors to consider for better quality sleep are avoiding any stimulants such as caffeine for 6+ hours before you need to sleep. Caffeine inhibits the brain from receiving signals from the body telling itself it is tired.
So now you have a grasp on how important sleep is and what it takes to get the sleep required. But let’s say for some reason you can’t get in your normal bedtime routine, or run short on time and don’t get enough. Now what? If you happen to fail at getting a full 8-10 hours, or just quality sleep in general, it may be a good idea to plan a nap. Yes, you heard that correctly. Naps are a great way to recover from sleep debt and restore some of the alertness and accuracy you may have lost from sleep deprivation. Though not all are created equal. A 15-20 minute power nap will restore some alertness and energy, but will not help restore recovery lost from sleep deprivation. 30 minutes to an hour will aid in recovery loss but may have you feeling groggy and tired following the nap as full sleep cycles run about 90 minutes a piece. A full 60-90 minute nap will help restore the side effects of sleep deprivation but if taken too late in the afternoon it will interrupt your arcadian rhythm, making it difficult for you to fall asleep at night. Take advantage of the best performance enhancing supplement on the market and go get yourself a solid night’s sleep!