Good sleep is perhaps one of the most underestimated aspects of strength training. By good sleep I mean ‘deep sleep’! By this I mean a form of sleeping in which you are more likely to be undisturbed by noises and events that may be happening around you. This can be compared to REM sleep or ‘rapid eye movement’ sleep, which is a lighter sleep phase.
In deep sleep, human growth hormone does its best work. It repairs damaged muscle tissues, aids in muscle growth and generally promotes the restoration of muscle building that weight trainers rely on for getting great results.
In fact, a decline in deep sleep as we age has been suggested as a contributing factor to muscle wasting (sarcopenia) in the elderly.
My conclusion on this is that if you want to get the best out of all the hard work, time and effort you put in at the gym, then you must plan to get sufficient quality sleep into your daily regime. How much of deep sleep, REM sleep and total sleep is optimum you ask?? Well this is still a matter of conjecture across gender and age. Yet as you must know from experience, refreshing sleep has its own rewards when you wake and it is unmistakable.
Advertisement
