I’m not sure about you, but I know if I don’t sleep well I absolutely hate life the next day. Not only does not sleeping well make life suck, it really messes with our ability to reach our fitness goals of losing fat, increasing strength, or being able to wrestle a bear (seriously who am I to judge what your goals are). All joking aside, sleep is crucial to a number of processes that really set the stage and keep the body performing at 100%, so making sure we get enough of it is one of the first and most important steps.
Where do you start though and how much is enough? You really ought to ask yourself a few questions in order to get an idea of whether or not you even need to change your sleep habits.
How much sleep do I average now?
Do I sleep uninterrupted or do I wake up multiple times a night?
Do I feel rested within 30 minutes of waking?
While I’d love to sit here and say each and every one of us should get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, realistically life gets in the way much of the time and we aren’t able to do that. However, I think shooting for 8 is a reasonable goal, with 7 being sort of a good minimum for optimal function. If we plan to get 8 and succeed most days that’s a win in my book, but if you’re getting 5 or 6 you are leaving results on the table. Finding ways to get an extra hour or two of sleep each night can make a world of difference in the way we feel and our ability to work hard in the gym and in life.
Sleep is also a time when our body is able to build up and repair the tissue we breakdown from our workouts, store and categorize our memories, and sort of reset our hormones. It might mean opting to not watch the baseball game into extra innings or your favorite TV show, but setting a bedtime and sticking to it is one way ensure you start to get enough sleep. Our bodies are pretty amazing and having a set bedtime each night our body will start to recognize this and signal the chemicals to prepare us for a sleep on par with Rip Van Winkle’s.
TV or other electronics shouldn’t be the last thing we are staring at before bed anyway. Ipads, tablets, and the like can stimulate our brains and make it tougher for us to fall asleep, especially if we use them too close to bedtime anyway. So spend your time reading, preferably something not too stimulating, or implement another type of wind-down routine that doesn’t involve TV or electronics before your head hits the pillow. And trying to make your house dark is a good idea too. Turn off any unnecessary lights or install a few dimmer switches so the lights aren’t on full blast.
We also want to make sure the hours we spend sleeping are at least restful if anything else, so focusing on sleep quality is as important as sleep quantity. Kids seem to be damn near nocturnal when we are getting our best sleep, and the trash truck inevitably wakes me up like the most faithful of alarms (Tuesdays at about 5am!). Distractions be damned, I usually sleep through the night and you should be able to as well, and if you aren’t that could be a sign of a larger problem. If you can’t seem to sleep through the night regularly you might consider a sleep study in order to find the cause of your concern, or at least a discussion with your primary care doctor might be helpful. There are also a bevy of medications that may have adverse effects on your sleep, again a discussion with your doc may find one that doesn’t have that effect.
As a last point, if you usually feel rested and refreshed within 30 minutes of waking up then you are probably getting enough sleep. We all inevitably feel groggy and tired when the alarm first goes off, but after you’ve hit the snooze 37 times and finally dragged yourself out of bed, within 30 minutes you really should feel pretty good and awake even without caffeine. If that’s not the case and you still feel like the walking dead, it might be an indication you aren’t getting enough sleep.