Whether you want to set a marathon PR or earn MVP accolades in your recreational sports league, training is not enough. You also need to spend sufficient time on rest and recovery.
There are strong ties between sleep and athletic performance, according toCharlene Gamaldo MD, medical director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep.
“Athletes need more sleep to adequately recover from training,” says Gamaldo. “If you’re not giving your body the sleep it needs to recover, you’re probably doing your training a disservice.”
缺乏睡眠的影响
In aliterature review研究人员发表在《运动医学》杂志上，指出，缺乏睡眠与较慢的反应时间有关，肌肉力量降低，速度和抓地力受损。据Gamaldo称，问题对于需要死记硬背的运动员，例如足球或曲棍球运动员，他们对他们的下一步行动做出分裂的决定。
One night of sleep deprivation might not cause you to strike out at bat or cross the finish line last, but chronic sleeplessness takes its toll on your athletic performance.
“Most of us have some level of partial sleep deprivation and there is so much variability between individuals for performance to recover from sleep debt,” Gamaldo says.
实际上，美国睡眠协会reportsthat more than 35% of adults get less than the recommended 7–9 hours of sleep per night — and athletes might need as much as 10 hours of sleep per night to recover from training, according to Gamaldo.
Despite a negative connection between sleep deprivation and performance,researchshowed that two nights of fragmented sleep did not affect heart rate, oxygen consumption or core body temperature during high-intensity treadmill sessions. In other words, a perception of fatigue tanks performance.
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“There is a ‘fatigue mindset’ that makes you feel like you can’t do it anymore even when your body is still able to perform,” says Gamaldo. “It’s harder to maintain an exercise routine when you feel too tired to enjoy it.”
THE SLEEP-EXERCISE CONNECTION
Whether you’re training for a podium finish or working out to lose weight, you should make sleep a crucial component of training. If you work out regularly, prioritizing sleep might be easier than you think.
Gamaldo解释说：“运动实际上增加了入睡的动力。”
Astudypublished in the journal Sleep found that regular exercise or participation in sports improved sleep quality among middle-aged women; additionalresearchshowed that getting at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity every week helped reduce insomnia.
The effects might be reversed if you’re working out before bed. Gamaldo notes that 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise causes your endorphins and adrenaline to spike; if this happens in the two hours before bedtime, it could make it harder to fall asleep.
“You might be more pumped up but you have to listen to your body,” she says. “If you don’t think exercising before bed affects your sleep, and it’s the only time you can fit in a workout, do it.”
Rest assured that your regular sweat sessions are not only burning calories and building muscle, they’re also helping you fall into dreamland.
