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Sleep is essential for athletes' physical and emotional recovery following training and competitions, both off the field and away from the gym.
The hormones that are released when you sleep aid in biologically restoring the body. While other hormones released during deep sleep serve to repair muscle, grow bones, and oxidize lipids, melatonin helps activate additional enzymes that aid in reducing inflammation.
The brain also utilizes sleep to download information to our memory areas and to create new connections between neurons. Sleep helps reinforce skills, intricate football plays, and competitive strategies learned during previous training sessions.
Sleep is necessary for everyone, but athletes must have excellent sleep to satisfy the physical and mental demands of their activity. To perform at the highest level, sleep must be incorporated into a player's routine at all levels of play, from the recreational to the professional ranks.
Facts: How Sleep Affects Athletes & Performance?
Sleep does more than just let you rest. It also recharges your 'battery,', also known as the nervous system, and gives you more energy. The deeper and better you sleep, the better you'll be able to reload. Here're a few benefits of sleep:
1) Improves Muscle Gain
If you don't let your central nervous system (CNS) rest, your fitness suffers because your CNS is in charge of muscle contractions, reaction time, and how much pain you feel. When you work out, you will get slower, weaker, and maybe even less coordinated.
Also, the endocrine system and hormone profile simultaneously work while you sleep. That's very important, as they make hormones like cortisol and testosterone, which make protein synthesis (muscle growth) happen.
When people are stressed, their cortisol levels are high, which can hurt their goals and performance over time. For example, if you aren't getting enough rest, your testosterone will drop after a few days. That will affect, among other things, muscle gain and sexual function.
2) Sleep Better; Work Out Harder
When you get a good night's sleep, you will be able to push your body harder. If you don't get a good reload while you sleep, your workout the next day might feel harder than it usually does.
When you're sleeping, all your body has to do is repair the muscles, breathe, and keep the hormone levels up. Compared to when you're awake, the body doesn't have to do much, so it can use most of its energy to heal damaged tissues. However, if you don't get enough or good sleep, your body won't be able to heal itself well.
If you don't get enough rest and recovery, muscle growth and repair can slow down, and the central nervous system stops recharging. That will make you feel tired, unmotivated, and weak during your workouts, which can start a negative feedback loop that turns into a vicious cycle.
3) Quality is Better than Quantity
Some people think that if they sleep eight to nine hours, that's enough, but sometimes it's not. The most important thing is how well you sleep. You can sleep for eight hours, but if the quality isn't good, you won't recover as well as if you had six hours of good sleep.
You also need a good sleep environment, sleep hygiene, nutrition (don't eat anything fatty, spicy, or highly processed right before bed), and supplements (like melatonin and tart cherry juice). Maintaining a hygienic, restful, and proper sleep routine can help improve sleep.
4) Include Low Intensity Exercises to Aid in Your Recovery
When you don't give your muscles enough time to heal, you risk overtraining them. You can also overwork your body if you only work hard, work out too often, and don't rest enough. These are the main things that cause overtraining of the central nervous system.
Include low-effort exercises, like walking, hiking, light swimming, or biking. That can help you stay active without doing too much, which is why it's called 'active recovery'.
5) Healthy Food Habits for Good Sleep
After a workout, you need a mix of carbs and protein that works quickly. You've hurt your muscles and used up most of your energy, so you need to give your body what it needs to rebuild and repair itself. Be careful about what you eat before bed.
If you eat a big meal before going to bed, you will give your body the nutrients and calories it needs. However, if you eat a big meal too close to when you go to sleep, your body will spend more time digesting, assimilating, and trying to pass on those nutrients than it does on recovering. Try to eat your meal one to two hours before going to bed.
Takeaway
If there's one part of training most athletes don't pay enough attention to, it's rest and sleep. Not getting enough of either can stop your progress, make you more likely to get hurt in the gym or on the road, and slow down processes in the body that control pretty much everything.
To get the most out of your recovery, plan workouts that help your muscles recover, make your training better, and most importantly, build a healthy sleep routine focusing on both quality and quantity.
