The importance of sleep during a prep
Without a doubt, the lack of quality sleep and total sleep time will absolutely have a negative impact on your prep and in many cases, will prevent you from achieving your best physique. It’s something that far too many competitors tend to overlook. They see the value of diet, cardio, weight training and supplements, but when it comes to sleep, it’s that one factor that gets, well ‘slept on’.
The challenge faced is that during a prep, we do many things to get the metabolism super charged up, like training, cardio, diet and even supplementation. Over weeks and months, this can result in the body running on overdrive and finding it difficult to slow down in the evenings when it’s time to retire for the day.
When you consistently aren’t getting optimal sleep over a period of time here’s what’s happening inside your body:
- Elevated cortisol levels
- Impaired insulin sensitivity
- Poor carbohydrate tolerance
- Sluggish metabolism (decreased thyroid output)
- Adrenal fatigue
- Blunted natural growth hormone secretion
- Poor muscle recovery
- Water retention
- GABA
- Magnesium
- B6
- Valerian
- L-Theanine
- Melatonin