Along with stretching, sleep has to be one of the most undercapitalised components of training. During sleep is when the majority of the bodies regenerative functions take place, so without adequate sleep we won’t be able to heal, repair or grow with maximum efficiency. You see, the body has limited resources and using these resources takes time. The body is also very smart/lazy, depending on how you want to look at it. Instead of working harder, the body will prioritize essential survival tasks, like organ maintenance, over less important tasks like developing muscle and healing injuries.
You may have noticed, and I envy you if you have not experienced this, that after a major physical trauma or injury, during recovery you are tired, and basically sleep all the time. This is because your body is committing additional resources to recovering and healing the damage that you so unkindly inflicted upon it.
No worries you say, just sleep more to recover faster. Except it’s not quite as simple as that, because you can still have a long disrupted sleep that won’t achieve as much as a shorter high quality sleep. That’s right, there is an art to sleeping… who would of thought, in other news most people don’t know how to breathe, walk, or run properly either but that’s for another blog article. So how much sleep should you get? Well the rule of thumb is 7 to 8 hours per night but this does vary for the individual. The biggest trick is forming a routine by locking in a bedtime and a wake time and then you can play with how long you sleep from there adjusting from either end. This can be easier said than done though because many people have disrupted sleep patterns from various environmental factors.
Our sleep/wake cycles are controlled by melatonin, cortisol and various other hormonal releases, which are triggered by natural occurrences like the sun rising and setting. The problem is we humans harnessed this little thing called electricity so we have artificial suns, which can stay risen indefinitely. These include lights, computers, mobile phones, televisions and anything else that glows in the dark. This artificial after hours light exposure can be disruptive to the body’s cycle causing poor sleep patterns. So limiting this exposure is the first step towards good restful rejuvenating sleep. You can do this by using minimal lighting at night in the house, minimise computer and phone use once the sun goes down and remove electronic devices like phone and televisions from the bedroom. Also, block external light from entering the bedroom from streetlights etc with blinds or curtains.
Great, now you have the environmental factors taken care of we can have a look at nutrition. Firstly, no stimulants after about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. This includes coffee, energy drinks, fat burners and pre workouts, which I disagree with for other reasons which you can read about in ‘Understanding Supplements’. Stimulants will spike your cortisol levels, this is your primary stress hormone and if it is elevated at night then you will not be able to sleep, at least not well. Cortisol normally spikes in the morning to wake you from your sleep then gradually lowers over the day allowing you to sleep again at night. This is a bit of an over simplification but is essentially what happens.
Carbs at night can help. I can hear it now, all the old school fitness gurus gasping and saying ‘You know nothing Cam Sturtridge’. Anyway, yes eat carbohydrates at night. Eating carbohydrates will maintain glycogen levels, this will blunt your cortisol release so you can relax at night. Carbs also release insulin, which transports tryptophan (an essential amino acid found in meat) to your brain where it’s converted into serotonin. This is a happy chemical and also a precursor to melatonin which makes you go to sleep. Now before you get all carried away and eat bowls of ice cream and cake, keep the carbs low GI (starchy vegetables) this way you will get a sustained energy release throughout the night and you won’t have any blood sugar crashes waking you through the night.
Saturated fats, yep don’t be scared, make sure you get your saturated fats at night time, but only from high quality animal protein sources like a delicious grass fed steak. These fats contain cholesterol, which is essential for the maintenance of every cell in your body, it is also an essential building block for important steroid hormones in the body helping create hormonal balance for your adrenal gland hormones and with your sex hormones, testosterone, progesterone and oestrogen. Fats also provide slow sustained energy release throughout the night ensuring you make it through to the morning without waking in a cold sweat because you had a blood sugar crash and your body had to release a heap of cortisol to keep you alive.
Lastly make sure you eat a couple of hours before you go to bed, this will give you body time to break things down and start to absorb the goodies you just fed it with before it goes into repair mode. These tricks will go a long way towards getting the most out of your sleep and your metabolism. To find out more about how you can achieve your potential and get the most from your body and performance head over to my contact page and book a consult.
Train hard and be safe.
Your strength coach,
Cam