Ben Carpenter, Personal Fitness Trainer
www.bcpersonaltraining.co.uk
Optimum Sleep Patterns for Faster Results!
Sleep is absolutely crucial for optimising your gym efforts. It isn’t a sexy topic and most people tend to overlook it without a second thought.
- You recover from your workouts in your sleep
- You build muscle while you are asleep
- Sleep is crucial to optimise every fat burning and muscle building hormone in your body.
So, if you aren’t sleeping well then you aren’t recovering well. If you aren’t recovering well what is the point of exercising in the first place? You go to the gym for a result and poor sleep will hinder that result.
I bring this up with my clients in the initial assessment and when I tell someone it looks like they have a problem with their sleep (from their body fat assessment) most say “no my sleep is fine” and expect me to leave it at that. When I go through further questions all gets revealed. Play along yourself;
1. Do you fall asleep before 10:30pm every night?
2. Do you wake up at the same time each day?
3. Do you sleep without noise or light?
4. Do you have 8-9 hours of sleep per night?
5. Do you fall asleep without medication?
6. Do you sleep continuously without waking (even for the toilet)?
7. Do you wake up without an alarm?
8. Do you fall asleep easily?
9. Do you wake up easily?
Answering no to more than one question indicates a sleep deficiency and should be addressed. Sleep governs your circadian rhythm (your bodily cycle) and heavily influences testosterone levels, cortisol levels and even blood sugar levels.
If you want to get lean, muscular or simply feel good and minimise your risk of disease then sleep is absolutely crucial.
