The magical powers of sleep for athletes and 9 hacks if you’re not getting enough

Sleep is something I struggle with and lately it’s been a tad worse than usual. I never really know why but it tends to ebb and flow with time. As I’m writing this post we’re getting our first winter wind storm (thankfully it’s rain) but it’s not looking good for tonight either! One thing athletes tend to be in denial about though is the importance of sleep in training. It’s when our bodies truly repair and restore themselves. But when you’re trying to squeeze your whole life in and training for a big event sleep can be the first to go. Plus training can throw other wrenches into your plan that interfere with your sleep. Someone who is really physically exerting themselves most days a week for months should ideally get more than 8 hours on average. So today I’m going to try to convince you that sleep should be a priority over many other things, especially for athletes, and give you some suggestions to get the most out of the hours you do get. And I’m going to use science to do it!

Why is sleep especially important for athletes

Sleep is arguably the most important tool in your recovery tool box (Samuels, 2008). We see that training athletes preform better in almost every measure when they get an extra 2 hours sleep each night in a week (Mah et al., 2011). We also know that sleep deprivation makes subsequent performance suffer (Oliver et al, 2009). Recovery is more than just performance though. It also lessens those oh so unpleasant feelings of fatigue. Recovery is also the biggest thing you can manage to prevent over use injuries from popping up when you’re in a training period. Studies also show that because of…