By: Chris Gates
We’ve all been on one side or the other when it comes to this topic.
You can probably attest to how much better, more energetic, and motivated you feel when you head to the gym after a good night’s rest. On the flip side, you’ve also probably tried to sleep walk your way through a workout or two after a poor night’s sleep — or hell, maybe you skipped the gym altogether.
But how much does sleep actually affect your performance in the gym? I’m talking outside of the mental effects from good or bad sleep.
Let’s dive into some of what the research says when it comes to training and sleep, and then we can dive into coaching cues and recommendations on what you can do to improve your sleep and performance in the gym.
Research Evidence
A recent meta analysis examined the effects of sleep duration on exercise performance in competitive athletes, and the overarching conclusion was pretty clear.
Across 19 different studies, longer sleep durations had either a positive or neutral effect on exercise performance. So at worst, more sleep does nothing. At best, it provides actual performance benefits.
That’s pretty straightforward and probably not all too surprising, right? More sleep = better training.
But there are a few additional details worth going over to put this all into context. Beyond the pretty clear evidence that more sleep is likely going to benefit your performance, chronic sleep habits proved to be much more impactful than acute sleep disruptions. Let me explain…
Changes in your sleep that last a week or more are likely going to be much more impactful than changes that occur for a day or two. As Greg Nuckols explains, “if you habitually get 8 hours of sleep, and you have one night where you only get 6 hours of sleep, you’ll probably be fine.”
That’s a key detail that seems to mirror other aspects of fitness or nutrition. If you consistently eat healthy and have one bad day or one bad meal, or if you consistently train hard with good programming and miss one day or have one bad session, it’s not going to derail your progress. However, if that one day snowballs into several you could run into some problems.
Sleep functions similarly.
There is also research evidence that suggests total workout volume can be impacted by even a single night of poor sleep.
So to sum it all up, a single night of poor sleep isn’t likely to have a huge effect on your training. It may potentially limit your overall workload — you may feel yourself more fatigued as that workout goes on — but overall you should still be able to get your training session in and do decent work.
The issues start to become more apparent as that one night of poor sleep turns into several. That’s when you see your performance decline, and we’ve also seen research indicate sleep loss results in drops in exercise tolerance, motivation, and mood, as well as rate of perceived exertion (RPE) rating higher for sleep deprived individuals.
And in terms of general health, sleep deficiency is linked to an increase in heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke.
Coaching Cues
To sum this all up, it’s important to get enough sleep each night. I know I’m not breaking any news with that conclusion.
Adults should get somewhere between 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and that’s my recommendation for everyone I work with. But I understand it’s easier said that done, and getting proper sleep requires a lot of effort.
My recommendations are kind of two-fold here.
For starters, the mental toll that sleep loss takes is very real and it’s important to manage.
As I mentioned at the start of this article, you may let a poor night of sleep negatively impact your training — perhaps even to the point of not training at all. Occasionally, that’s probably not a big deal, but if this is a recurring issue whenever you have poor sleep it’s probably something to dive in to in more detail.
Mentally adjusting and understanding that one night of poor sleep doesn’t have to derail your day is a big hurdle to overcome. We can stretch that further, too, to make sure one night of poor sleep doesn’t mentally screw up your sleep the next time you lay your head down on a pillow.
That’s a problem I see happen with clients. One bad night can snowball into a bad week pretty quickly. Poor sleep sometimes leads to the following sequence of events:
- Skipping the gym.
- Worrying about getting good sleep the next night.
- Laying in bed worrying about falling asleep.
- Wash, rinse, repeat.
We don’t want you getting in your own head and ruining an entire week’s worth of sleep.
It’s common.
That mental challenge is always going to be there, but hopefully some of this research evidence we’ve gone through can ease your fears a bit. What we’re seeing is that one poor night of sleep seems to simply be a small blip on the radar.
The second challenge is to work on your sleep every day and treat it like you would with your actual training. Make a routine out of it. Just like you’d have sets, reps, and weight outlined for each exercise within an overall program, you should have a routine outlined for your sleep each day.
Stay tuned next week for an article on exactly what I mean here. We’ll dive deep into the work involved in establishing proper sleep habits and the positive impact it can have over time. I’ll also map out a routine I highly recommend that can get you into a good place with your sleep over time.
Another resource you can check out is my article on sleep tips. It has more information and recommendations that might benefit you.
Routines are powerful, and that’s going to go a long way to help you get the most out of your sleep each night.
We already know that sleep is very important in terms of recovery from your training, so putting a routine in place will maximize your ability to recover and feel ready to take on your next workout.
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I hope you found this article helpful! As you can tell, sleep is a really important piece of the overall fitness, nutrition, and wellness routine. If you’re interested in getting some help to put all of these pieces together and build out a really productive routine, that’s what I do! Check out my coaching page and contact me if you’re interested in talking about how we might work together.
Thanks for reading!
CGF!