How & Why to optimise your sleep

The fact that 1/3 of a human’s life is spent sleeping may come as a shock but it is also not really a surprise that the majority of us (even top-level athletes) pay little attention to sleep performance.

Sleep is absolutely crucial – it promotes responses and adaptations to training, repair of muscle damage on a micro level and helps the generation of new micro vascular networks around muscle fibres.

If you want to really maximise your training you should be treating sleep as one of the key components of your plan towards your ‘A’ race.

Why the amateur cyclist needs more sleep?

What’s the biggest difference between you and the professional athlete? It could be argued that power output, training volume and muscular strength are the most noticeable distinctions, however one of the biggest differences between the amateur and the professionals is the quality of recovery time. If you really want to make the ‘gains’ on the bike then you need to show the same level of commitment to recovery as you do to your training. Poor sleep and recovery inhibit muscular repair, increases your risk to injury and also affects performance in training meaning that you won’t capitalise on the hard hours you are doing in the saddle.

Muscular adaptation

Sleep is one of the key times when the all-important human growth hormone (HGH) is released. Your body will also release HGH during exercises however, the majority is released while your body is asleep.

The collection of studies done by the Sleep Foundation identifies that whilst sleeping, our body goes through 3 non-REM sleep stages (N1 through to 3) and REM, each full cycle lasting around 90 minutes. The N3 stage is where the blood is sent to the muscles in order to aid tissue repair and growth. This is the period of deep sleep that releases HGH, replenish glycogen levels and creates long term memory. Therefore, the more cycles that we can put our bodies through, the better our recovery between sessions.

4 tips to improve your sleep performance:

Make sure you are sleeping in the dark

· Make sure your bedroom is dark enough that you are not able to see your fingers when you are holding your hand out in front of your face.

· Cover up all electronics with LED’s. Research has shown it takes as little as 80 ‘LUX’ for your brain to register “daytime” signals that will affect sleep.

· Consider investing in blackout curtains to stop light coming in from the outside.

Stop sound

· Make sure your room is quiet, you could consider earplugs if you can’t remove the noise. There is a lot of research out on the internet which shows even low levels of noise can decrease the quality of sleep.

Sleep routine

· Having a nighttime ritual can help you relax, reduce sleep latency and be better prepared for the next day.

· Try meditation or breathing exercises to relax and clear your mind.

Fuel for the occasion

· Don’t eat too much close to bed as going to bed with a full stomach can increase sleep latency and decrease quality.

· Try to cut out caffeine for up to 4 hours before bed (Note – this is not only coffee, there are less obvious sources of caffeine even down to cereals!).

· Use foods/drinks which promote good sleep such as cheery juice (Also good for recovery – check that out here!) and herbal teas.

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