In the world of fitness, most folks love to talk about trending topics surrounding exercises, training programs, diets, fat-burning pills, and more.
Yet, the thing that arguably makes the most significant difference is often left in the background.
What are we talking about?
Sleep.
Today, we’ll go over why sleep is so vital and why getting enough of it might just be the best thing you can do.
Sleep Is Vital For Fitness
Sleep has been shown to play essential roles in fitness aspects such as:
Fat loss - sleep deprivation alone can undermine our fat loss efforts and lead to more significant overall muscle losses.
Muscle gain - sleep deprivation hinders muscle protein synthesis rates and suppresses levels of testosterone, which negatively impacts our muscle growth in the long-run.
Athletic performance - research suggests that sleep deprivation decreases our strength, power output, endurance, accuracy, and more.
Work capacity - it appears that getting enough sleep allows us to perform more work and become fatigued more slowly.
Recovery between workouts - sleep deprivation slows down muscle repair and has been shown to prolong muscle soreness.
Sleep Improves Our Health
Sleep is vital for every system within the body. More specifically, sleep is critical for:
Maintaining hormonal balance;
Having a robust immune system;
Blood glucose regulation;
Better insulin sensitivity and lower risk of developing diabetes;
Cardiovascular health.
Sleep Boosts Cognition, Motivation, and Productivity
Sleep is essential for cognition. As little as one night of poor sleep is enough to significantly decrease our ability to think, concentrate, make decisions, and do creative work.
What’s more, sleep is vital for motivation because when we are tired, we are more likely to pick the path of least resistance. And to feel motivated and do productive work for hours, we need to feel energized and clear of mind.
So, if you want to optimize your health and fitness, stay mentally-sharp, boost your motivation, and become more productive, aim to get at least seven hours of sleep every night.