By: Chris Gates

You probably know the fundamental principles of muscle growth.

• Lift weights.
• Progressive overload.
• Eat enough calories and protein.

But there’s one important element to building muscle that isn’t as widely understood.

Sleep.

Why is sleep so important for muscle growth and recovery?

In this article, you’ll learn everything you need to know about sleep and how it can lead to greater gains and more progress in the gym.

Because facts are facts.

You can have 90 percent of the fundamentals dialed in, but if you’re not getting enough sleep (or having enough high-quality sleep) you’re going to struggle to see progress.

Tons of people make progress with an average training program when they have pristine sleep. But you can have the most “optimal” training program in the world, and struggle to see progress when your sleep quality is terrible.

Sleep matters. A lot.

In this article, you’ll learn about:

• Sleep, and how it improves your overall health.
• How and why sleep impacts your body composition.
• What are your sleep cycles, and why do they matter?
• How to improve your sleep hygiene.

And of course, why is sleep so important for muscle growth and recovery?

So, if that sounds good to you, let’s wait no more. Time to dive in!

Real Quick: Let’s Talk Muscle Growth

Before we dive into sleep, I want to make sure you and I are on the same page about muscle growth, and what’s required to build muscle.

Because you can’t just show up to the gym and go through the motions in every workout. You need to be legitimately pushing yourself for every set of every exercise.

A key element to successfully building muscle is progressive overload, which means you’re doing more overall work in the gym as time goes on.

• Perhaps you find you’re able to lift more weight.
• Or, you might add reps to individual exercises as you get stronger.
• You also could add more sets to your workout for the muscle groups you’re training.
• Or some combination of all three of those items above.

And once you’re done training in the gym, you need to make sure your diet is aligned with your goal of building muscle.

Make sure you’re in a slight calorie surplus, and that you’ve got adequate protein in your diet consistently.

When you’ve got those items in place, then it’s time to dial in some other aspects of your body’s recovery.

And none are more important than sleep.

Learn about some of my AMAZING clients, who have fine-tuned their lifestyle habits (including sleep!) to build muscle, burn fat, and see amazing results.

Sleep and Your Overall Health

It’s worth mentioning that, for any health or fitness goal, your general health is paramount.

You shouldn’t pursue something that’s going to negatively impact your overall health, nor should you put yourself through a training or nutrition protocol that’s going to be detrimental.

All fitness pursuits should be viewed in the lens of overall health and longevity.

And when it comes to muscle growth, the great news is that more muscle mass is generally associated with better health and longer lifespan.

To build more muscle, you’ll need adequate sleep. And those two are a match made in heaven when it comes to supporting your health.

When adults get the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep on a regular basis, it supports:

• Weight management
• Reduced illnesses
• Lower stress
• Reduced risk for heart disease and diabetes
• Better mood
• Improved brain function

The list goes on and on.

While on the flip side, poor or insufficient sleep has been shown in research to negatively impact the cardiovascular, respiratory, neuroendocrine, neuromuscular, gastro-intestinal, and immune systems.

Lack of sleep has also been shown to reduce training performance, which is a big problem for muscle growth (to build muscle, your training performance needs to increase). It can also lead to injuries.

With better sleep comes better health. And with better health comes more progress in the gym.

Why is Sleep So Important for Muscle Growth and Recovery? Your Hormones

Hormones are powerful when it comes to muscle growth and recovery.

And sleep plays a big role in regulating them.

For instance, your body secretes something called growth hormone when you sleep, which is essential for building muscle.

And I know when I first heard about growth hormone, it was back when baseball players were all juiced up and doing illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I considered it to be a steroid, and a bad thing.

But your body actually produces it naturally as a way to repair your muscles, in addition to other pathways that lead to better body composition.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism had some interesting findings:

• Sleep deprivation significantly reduced the release of growth hormone.
• Less growth hormone impairs the body’s ability to recover and build new muscle tissue.

Sleep impacts your testosterone levels, too. Once again, we’re talking about something I used to only consider as a steroid, and illegal, and something elite athletes abuse.

But… Your body naturally produces testosterone.

And it’s crucial for increasing muscle mass.

A research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found:

• Less sleep led to decreases in testosterone levels.
• Lower testosterone reduces your ability to recover and build muscle.
• A drop in testosterone can also affect overall athletic performance.

The bulk of your recovery happens when you’re sleeping, by way of the anabolic hormones that produce muscle recovery and growth.

Why is Sleep So Important for Muscle Growth and Recovery? REM Sleep

So now you have a good idea of why sleep is so important for your hormones, and how that leads to better muscle growth and recovery.

And let’s build on that for a moment here, because there are patterns in your sleep that matter.

There are two sleep cycles for you to be aware of:

1. REM sleep.
2. Deep sleep.

REM sleep is “rapid eye movement” sleep, and it’s the time where your brain undergoes a fair share of recovery.

Just like your muscles, bones, ligaments, and other tissues need to recover from strength training, your brain needs to recover from the previous day’s activity.

Imagine you had a really demanding day at work, or there were emotional stressors weighing on you. That stuff all takes a toll, even if it’s not a physical toll like breaking down muscle tissue in the gym.

Your body needs to recover from that, just like it needs to recover from your workouts, and REM sleep is where that happens.

Why is Sleep So Important for Muscle Growth and Recovery? Deep Sleep

Deep sleep tends to be the sleep cycle most responsible for repairing and building bones, muscles, and other tissues in your body. And this is when those hormones are secreted to assist in the process of muscle recovery and growth.

So when you pair REM sleep and deep sleep together, you’ve got the total recovery package for better health, and better progress in the gym.

I mean, think about it:

• Good training performance requires you to be be alert, and fresh cognitively so that you can put your all into your workout (thank you REM sleep).
• When you’re fresh mentally, your brain is able to communicate effectively throughout your body to help you with form, technique, and powering through challenging exercises.
• And since you had such incredible brain power during your workout, you gave your body a quality stimulus to recover from! (Enter, deep sleep).

Throughout each night, ideally your body will cycle between REM sleep and deep sleep several times.

And there are ways you can promote the best possible sleep during those cycles. Let’s dive into that next.

How to Improve Your Sleep Hygiene

There’s this term “sleep hygiene,” and I want you to become very familiar with it.

It refers to the routines and habits you put in place in order to promote quality sleep.

And there are a bunch of factors that, when paired together consistently, can be unbelievably powerful at promoting high-quality sleep.

Try one, or try several. The more of these that you can dial in, the more likely you’re going to see your sleep quality improve over time.

• Wake Times: Your body adjusts to daily patterns, and certain hormones get secreted based on the time of day. Your body releases cortisol and other hormones that help you wake up, and the more you wake up at the same time of day, every day, these hormones will adjust and help you start the day feeling more fresh and energized.

• Sleep Times: Similar to waking up, your body releases melatonin around the time you normally go to bed, which helps you fall asleep. In order to promote a full night of high quality sleep, you should go to bed at the same time every day to encourage the release of melatonin. Ideally, you’re laying down 7-9 hours before your wake time.

• Limit Screen Time: Something that can negatively impact your ability to fall asleep is screen time within 1-2 hours of going to bed. Some research has shown blue light (the light emitted from phones, TV’s, and other screens) suppresses the natural release of melatonin, making falling asleep more difficult.

• Dark Bedroom: The darker your room, the better. Research has found that when you’re in a room that’s completely dark (or as dark as possible), your body can release melatonin more efficiently. Try to limit smaller lights around your room — such as chargers, alarm clocks, etc. — and invest in blackout curtains so that no light from the outside disturbs your sleep.

• White Noise: Noise is another obvious factor that can disturb your sleep. Whether it be a truck driving by in the night, your spouse walking up the stairs, or your kids flushing the toilet, these sounds can easily wake you up. Think about investing in a sound machine, or turn the white noise on with your phone, to block out these little disturbances.

• Caffeine Timing: The closer you drink caffeine to your bedtime, the worse your sleep will be. Caffeine has what’s called a “half life” of around 6 hours. Meaning, 6 hours after you consume caffeine, half of it is still in your system. In my opinion, a great cutoff time for caffeine is Noon.

• Bedroom Etiquette: Lastly, you should probably only use your room for sleep. Don’t make it an entertainment center as well, with a big screen TV, video games, social media use, etc. All those things do is encourage stimulation, in an atmosphere where you need to promote calm.

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Why is sleep so important for muscle growth and recovery?

Can you tell?

I think at this point, it’s pretty clear that sleep plays an unbelievably important role in your fitness goals.

But how much do you need?

For general health, the common recommendation is 7-9 hours a night for adults. And I think that’s pretty spot-on for most fitness goals, too, such as building muscle.

But research suggests potentially more sleep could lead to even more recovery and growth. So if you have high aspirations of transforming your body, or if you’re an athlete, sleeping more than the standard 7-9 hours a night may be appropriate.

More sleep seems to equate to more recovery.

Which means more progress.

OK, But How Little Sleep is Too Little?

Could you run into a situation where you’re getting too little sleep?

If more sleep is better, is less sleep actually going to lead to your progress diminishing?

It’s possible.

One night of poor sleep isn’t likely to make an impact. But, if you’re experiencing chronically low sleep, that’s where the issues arise.

• Hormonal shifts can occur that lead to fat storage in the body.
• Nutritional decision making also tends to take a hit when you’re tired — you’ll tend to reach for the easier, more highly processed and calorie-dense foods.
• And there has been research that shows insufficient sleep leads to overeating, due to increased appetite.
• Heck, there’s even some research showing a lack of sleep results in reduced rates of protein synthesis, which obviously will impact your ability to build muscle and change your body composition.
• On the flip side, more sleep can actually lead to greater fat loss and better body composition.

How little is too little? The answer is going to be different for everyone.

From my observations as a coach, consistently getting 5 hours or less on a nightly basis is where the real problems occur with performance, recovery, and muscle growth.

I Hope This Helps!

As you can see, there are many reasons to focus on your sleep if you want to prioritize muscle growth and recovery.

Quite simply, sleep is where those results happen.

And what’s so cool is that better sleep, and better muscle growth and recovery, lead to better health and longevity.

If you’re interested in building a program customized to you, that encompasses all of the healthy lifestyle habits you read about in today’s article, I’d love to help!

I’m an online coach, and I work with people all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and develop healthy lifestyle habits. The goal with every person I work with is to not only make progress now, but help you learn to maintain your progress long term.

So if that sounds good to you, head over to my coaching page to learn more!

Thanks for stopping by and reading!

~ Chris