We all know how important sleep is. Quality time between the sheets will reduce your stress levels, improve your recovery time and increase your energy levels. Sleep is one of the most effective tools when it comes to health and wellbeing.
Telling people that they’d benefit from a bit more Stage 4 sleep means nothing
It’s why we, as a nation, are so obsessed with our own sleeping habits, especially with it comes to sporting performance. But how much of an impact does sleep have?
(Related: Can I train my body to sleep less?)
According to Kevin Morgan, professor of psychology and director of the Clinical Sleep Research Unit at Loughborough University, sports that require explosive movements and are short in duration, like sprinting or weightlifting, are not affected by a lack of sleep and has little impact on how your body performs the next day.
(Related: 5 ways to improve your sleep and recover faster from exercise)
That’s not to say it won’t affect you mentally, which can have impact your performance. But it’s important to realise that it’s all in your mind.
Psychologically though, a poor night’s sleep, can affect how you perform, which is something you have to guard against, in a similar way to former world champion UFC fighter, Georges St-Pierre.
In an interview with Joe Rogan, UFC fighter Georges St-Pierre explained that even though he finds it difficult to sleep before big fights, he doesn’t let this worry him. Instead he just accepts that he’s “not going to sleep well” and remains confident in the knowledge that “it’s not going to affect the outcome of the competition.”
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Watch: Why you need to be eating eggs before you go to sleep
The best time to workout
Short-term sleep problems don’t often turn into long-term ones because sleep is a self-regulating activity. To put it simply, a lack of sleep one night is generally compensated for by an increased demand for sleep the following night.
(Related: 9 easy steps to get a better night’s sleep)
However, if you do find yourself missing out on sleep night after night, there are steps you can take to make sure that you’re giving your body the best opportunity to achieve the pillow-time it needs. For example, the times you choose to perform physical activities.
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“If you think the best time to be running is 9 o’clock at night because that’s when your agenda is winding down, it means that your body temperature is going to be way higher than is really compatible with high-quality sleep at most people’s usual bedtime,” says Morgan. “It might be smarter to run earlier so that your body has time to cool and your level of arousal has time to restore a baseline before you try to down regulate and go to sleep.”
The benefits of working out during work
Morgan explains that he had a colleague who had no problem getting a good night’s sleep but found it difficult to stay awake during his working day. “He just faded in the mid-afternoon,” says Morgan. “He could hardly stay awake in a meeting between 3pm and 5pm.”
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To combat this, Morgan’s colleague went to the gym when he was flagging, which renewed his energy levels. “The environment of the gym, the music and the demands of the tasks just kept him aroused during his weakest part of the day and sent him out feeling much better,” says Morgan.
Does extending sleep help performance?
A 2011 study into the sleeping habits of collegiate basketball players appeared to show that extending sleep can boost athletic performance.
For the study, Cheri Mah, who is now a research fellow at the University of California San Francisco’s Human Performance Center, asked eleven of Stanford’s men’s varsity basketball team to maintain their normal sleeping schedules for two-to-four weeks, before embarking on a five-to-seven-week period where they would try to get as much sleep as possible with a minimum goal of ten hours in bed each night.
(Related: When to work out for a better night’s sleep)
The players reported that after extending their sleep, their shooting accuracy improved, daytime tiredness decreased, and their overall ratings of physical and mental well-being also improved. Because no control group was used in the study, Morgan says the jury is still out on whether sleep extension can really boost performance.
Since that study, Mah has remained actively engaged in trying to find out whether sleep extension does boost performance and has written more on the subject. In a paper published last year, Mah showed that professional baseball players’ cognitive processing and ability to block out distractions improved when they undertook a short-term sleep extension of one additional hour for five days.
(Related: How to feel more energised with less sleep)
How much sleep do you need?
(Related: 6 bad things that happen to your body when you sleep too much)
As Morgan explains, there is no minimum or maximum amount of sleep that anyone needs. The amount of sleep our bodies require differs from person to person, and as Morgan points out, advocating for a recommended amount of sleep would not only be unhelpful, it would be counterproductive.
“So many people will fall below it which will create anxiety, which needlessly makes people concerned about something they probably can’t achieve anyway,” says Morgan.
(Related: 5 popular sleeping myths debunked)
If you feel that you aren’t getting enough sleep, unfortunately there’s no quick fix.
“You can eat more carbs. That’s easy, it’s just a matter of choice, and you can eat more protein – just put more in your supermarket basket, but telling people that they’d benefit from a bit more Stage 4 sleep means nothing because you can’t do anything about this stuff. You can’t buy it, you can’t eat it, you can’t make sleep happen,” says Morgan.
“All you can do is just make sure that you go to sleep at a reasonable time and you give your body the opportunity to achieve the sleep that it needs.”
