How Sleeping Helps Your Workouts

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently told a room full of people in Toronto Canada that he will sleep only 6 hours a night when he is busy and needs to get things done.

I can’t imagine how a person as busy as someone like Arnold could get by with only 6 hours sleep. I need a good 8 hours a night on a consistent basis to function at optimal levels and sometimes I don’t that is even enough.

When it comes to sleep you want to get enough because a lack of sleep will definitely affect the results you see from your work outs. People who work out seriously have a game plan for when they are in the gym with all kinds of exercises and sets and rep schemes.

They also have their diets under control only eating healthy and nutritious foods that will benefit them and help to promote good health.

So if you are doing all of that why would you sabotage all of your hard work in the gym and kitchen by not getting enough sleep every night?

When you sleep your body works on repairing your muscle tissue and rebuilds and strengthens your muscle.

If you are not getting enough sleep and your body does not have enough time to repair and recover from your workouts you will actually notice a decrease in energy and strength and you will in no time end up in a state of over training.

You risk injuring yourself a lot easier when you don’t get enough sleep. Your body releases a growth hormone while you sleep so if you are not sleeping enough you are not taking advantage of this crucial time of the day to heal and repair so you can keep moving forward with your health and work outs.

Not enough sleep means not enough growth hormone to build those muscles you work so hard on at the gym.

Another negative thing about not sleeping enough is that men who do not get enough sleep or are sleep deprived will develop higher cortisol levels in the body and cortisol is the muscle building enemy.

Cortisol actually gets your body to break down tissue and the more you let it the more cortisol will develop. Cortisol is not your friend whether you are a bodybuilder or just wanting to be toned.

If you are not sleeping enough you are throwing your system out of whack.

If your body is out of whack it will not function properly and that means function properly when processing foods, burning fat, building and keeping muscle and so on.

Lacking in sleep can actually play with your blood sugar levels causing you to want to overeat, gain weight and more.

If you are not getting enough sleep your thyroid hormone will become suppressed and you will not burn calories as efficiently as you should which could quite easily lead to weight gain.

This information should be enough to make you want to jump right into bed and catch some shut eye. Make sure to get enough sleep.

If you are tired every single morning when waking then try going to bed at least a half hour earlier on a consistent basis. If a half hour is not enough try forty five minutes or more. Eventually you will see what works best for you. Better to be over on sleep than short and tired and not able to function at 100% capacity.