Bad Sleep…Destroying Your Progress?

So you’ve had a bad nights sleep…AGAIN.

Stringing together night after night of 6 hours of sleep, occasionally more, occasionally less.

You start to tell yourself this is a normal amount and that you can get by just fine on it. It wont effect you, maybe you’ll just push through by having some extra coffee or some other stimulant so you don’t feel so tired.

Over time you start to have lower and lower energy levels.

How is this pattern of poor sleep affecting your results in the gym?

It is making you:

• Fatter (lose less weight and during weight loss you will lose less fat & more muscle)

• Weaker (decreases strength and endurance progress)

Sleep has wide ranging effects on your body’s metabolism, hormones, and psychology.

Good sleep is 7.5-9hrs of sleep a night. If you aren’t getting that here’s how it is likely affecting your gym progress.

Weight Loss

To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit (eating less energy than the amount your body burns each day). When you get poor sleep your body alters the hormones in your body to cause you to crave eating more. You don’t just get hungry, you get hungry for high calorie dense sugary and fatty foods. Snacking and portion sizes increase, your meal plan gets thrown off, the weight you lose is more shifted towards more muscle than fat, and you might even stop losing weight or start gaining.

This appetite regulation cycle in your body is controlled by the hormones ghrelin and leptin.

Ghrelin increases your feelings of hunger and leptin decreases them making you feel full or satiated.

Your poor sleep increases the amount of ghrelin released into your blood stream and decreases the amount of leptin.  

Ghrelin comes with some other negative side effects that affect your weight loss.

It decreases your insulin sensitivity leading to high blood sugar levels. Your muscles don’t absorb these sugars as well as they should so your body winds up storing the sugar in your blood as fat. Your body then releases more insulin to combat the high blood sugars which results in a cycle of more and more fat storage and hunger. This developed glucose intolerance can be a precursor to diabetes.

Alongside this your body will start to chronically increase levels of the stress hormone called cortisol in your body (especially when accompanied by caffeine abuse) which further increases these trends of fat storage, hunger and high blood glucose levels.

Metabolically after poor sleep your body decreases its energy expenditure at rest resulting in you burning less calories during the day stunting weight loss.

Psychologically poor sleep will leave you feeling low energy, lethargic, less social, less happy which all will leave you less likely to enjoy getting your workouts in and less likely to make good food decisions like cooking your own meals. More missed workouts will put you further away from your weight loss goals and shift your weight loss to a higher proportion of muscle lost as opposed to fat.

Performance

Poor sleep cuts into, disrupts, and slows down your progress in the gym.

To achieve optimal results in the gym you need high levels of performance consistently over a long period of time in training. Precise technique performed at maximal levels of output (velocity, weight, work capacity) as often as possible will result in your best results regardless of what your goal is (strength based, explosive based, endurance based).

Poor sleep leaves you with decreased your psychological and physical readiness:

Slower speed, power, endurance, reaction times, cognitive function, decreased accuracy, lack of concentration and mental focus, increased errors, and increased negative mind state.

You perform how you train. Train weak and sloppy and you’ll perform that way. Showing up as prepared for your training sessions is essential to great progress and good sleep is the foundation of that.

To gain as much muscle as possible you’ll want to be able to lift the heaviest weight you can for the given volume with precise and safe technique. Maximizing the muscular tension and being able to push yourself close to failure on sets. The fatigue from your lack of sleep will prevent you from doing this repeatedly at a high level.

Poor decision making and intensity of focus can increase your injury risk. Doing something with poor technique or making a bad decision that causes you to get injured will hamper your performance immediately and can have long lasting consequences.

Recovery

Recovery is essential to your long-term progress. Sleep facilitates your bodies repair processes through release of growth hormones, decreasing cortisol levels, and decreasing inflammation. With this improved healing to your bodies immune system, muscle cells, and other damaged tissues you will continue to be able to train at a high level each workout. Insufficient recovery over time can lead to setbacks like illness and injury as well as extend the durations of these setbacks. Staying healthy is an essential part of being available to continue to work out, maintaining your performances within those workouts, and as a result reaching your goals.

How to Improve Sleep

So what can you do to improve your current sleep?

Build healthy habits surrounding your sleep routine and maximizing your sleep environment can help to ensure you get a great night of sleep that is both deep and long.

Routine:

Have a consistent sleep and wake time. Set yourself up for success by making the sleep window 7.5-9hrs long

Avoid consuming food especially heavy meals before you go to bed unless your stomach keeps you up by growling then have a light snack to calm it.

Get off of all screens 1 hour prior to bed

Go from a hot to a cool environment. Warm shower or bath into a cool room

Have a cool down routine. Read, meditate, something that relaxes your body and mind

Watch your stimulant timing. No caffeine after 3pm and if you have ADHD medication take it early in the day so it doesn’t affect your sleep.

In the morning get out into the sunlight and expose your eyes to it for 15 minutes

Avoid naps late in the day

Avoid consuming alcohol.

Avoid intense exercise right before bed

Exercise Daily. A walk is perfect to get sun exposure and some cardio to help you sleep.

Consider sleep aid supplements such as melatonin or magnesium glycinate

Environment:

Decrease blue light exposure with blue light blocking glasses or screens for monitors.

Dim the lights around you prior to going to bed.

Make your room as dark as possible. Eliminate lights from outside with blackout curtains and limit lights from devices in your room. Sleep masks if you can’t

Cold room at night helps

Sleep with your phone in a different room (put it on silent mode)

A quiet room will help you sleep without disturbances. Earplugs if needed

Keep your bedroom to just sleeping and intimate activities… Don’t live out of it.

Make sure you don’t have a sleep disorder like sleep apnea or gastric reflux preventing you from sleeping well.