Sleep quality is as important as the quality of food for an active and healthy life. When you don’t sleep well, it influences your training. It also affects the course of a day in different areas.
Many factors cause people to sleep less and over time they can develop into bad habits. We live in a consumer society that is becoming more and more competitive. Sometimes you have to stay up late for different reasons. It can be for your work, to fix something in your house or to see what’s new on the Internet / social media. Either way, you have chosen to assign more importance to these tasks than your hours of sleep.
Side effects of sleep less
Here is a list of the consequences of sleep deprivation:
Low energy
It’s impossible to be 100% in your training with low energy. Once you’re full of energy, you can do more repetitions and progress. You can even lift more weight and set a new record. But if you don’t have all the energy, maintaining performance from the last time should be the best plot. This is unfortunately not the case.
Bad mood
Bad sleep, bad mood, bad day. You’re more irritable and more nervous because your body hasn’t created enough serotonin. A training session can help you improve your mood. It influences your brain to give the order to produce endorphins. But if you don’t train, you’ll keep your bad mood.
Be lazy
When you wake up and don’t get enough sleep, you feel tired and unmotivated. You want to save the little energy you have, so you do the least during the day. A workout makes you consume a lot of energy, but if you don’t have enough, you’ll skip it.
Loss of focus
When you’re tired, it’s difficult to stay focused for a long time. Sometimes when I train and I’m a little tired, I decrease the intensity of my workout. I can feel the difference when I have good energy because I get enough sleep. In each set, I try to do 1-2 extra repetitions. But once I don’t sleep well, I do the least.
This means that the quality of your training to gain muscle or lose fat also depends on your sleep.
Weak metabolism
Sleeping less decreases your metabolism and leptin. Leptin is a hormone that controls your appetite. In this case, you are more hungry than usual and the desire to eat unhealthy foods increases. This can destroy your diet and training as you need to eat a healthy diet to get results.
Poor recovery
The best time to recover is at night. Your cells, bones, muscles and more can only be 100% repaired when you’re inactive. When you do strength training or weight training, your muscles grow during this time. You also relieve muscle tension and pain while you sleep.
This plan influences you to sleep well
Here some advice to have increase the time and the quality of your sleep:
- The training influences you to have a better quality of sleep. But be careful not to have your session before your sleep. Your body will be too active to sleep.
- Select a time to go to your bed. This time allows you to lie on your bed and prepare to relax before sleeping. Usually, you warm up before your workout, this is the same principle here.
- Set an alarm 30 minutes before going to bed. During these minutes, you turn off all of your electronic devices (phone, laptop, computer, etc.). Electronics use blue lights that disrupt your biological clock. When the sun goes down, your body knows that you’ll sleep soon and will slow down your body’s activities. Checking your emails or social media prevents you from falling asleep.
- Organize your bedroom so that it’s dark and quiet. Create and keep the best possible environment for sleeping.
- Doing a meditation session can be a great help when you’re in your bedroom. It makes your mind and body ready for sleep. Use a meditation book if you want more information, don’t use your phone. Remember, the blue lights!
Sleep influences your health and your training progress. Then you have to take care of it in the same way that you take care of your food. Good sleep creates a good day, so enjoy your sleep.
Share this article if you think it can help someone you know. Thank you.
-Steph