Sleeping more is as important for athletes as right nutrition
Study reveals that athletes reported significant increases in performance when they increased their amount of sleep to 10 hours per night
By Lee Kemp
With the busy schedules we all keep today, combined with the myriad of things grabbing our attention throughout the day and often late into the night, getting enough sleep is often over- looked and neglected as a wrestler or athlete is training and even competing.
Getting more sleep can often be the performance “Game Changer” all wrestlers and athletes are looking for. There is much evidence to support this “more sleep - increased performance equation,” including a study done more than 10 years ago by a Stanford University researcher named Cheri Mah.
The athletes she was working with all reported significant increases in performance when they increased their sleep to 10 hours per night. It’s not hard to understand the opposite of this that sleep deprivation can lead to declines in physical perform- ance.
Getting enough sleep increases a host of things including increased; focus, stamina, strength, muscle growth and regen- eration to name a few.
This is what happens while we sleep. Important hormones are released that are only triggered by darkness and light intervals over alternating 24 hour periods regulated by our bodies “inter- nal clock.” You know what I’m talking about. When this rhythm is working the way it should, we feel rested and we don’t need an alarm clock – we just wake up on cue every morning ready to go. The part of sleep that I am talking about here is REM (or deep sleep) and for at least 6 continuous, uninterrupted hours. That means no waking up or going to the bathroom. So blinds closed with no light or waking up for all of the 10
hours.
When we mess with these rhythms by not getting enough sleep, our metabolism of glucose (which gives us energy) declines, and our level of cortisol (which causes stress) increas- es.
Less Energy – More Stress is an equation for athletic disas- ter.
The longer we are not in the proper sleep rhythm the greater likelihood for diminished athletic performance, not to mention decreased concentration, focus and increased likelihood of injury.
Getting 10 hours of sleep in the proper cycles is naturally anabolic, meaning during deep REM sleep, our bodies release growth hormone, which stimulates the healing and growth of
26 USA Wrestler
muscle and bone. Sleep benefits can also come in short intervals when we doze
off into a deep sleep for 15-20 minutes, sometimes called “power naps.”
When we awake from one of these short naps we usually feel refreshed and ready to go. Sleep in these two ways, the long 10 hours at night and the power naps, helps the body in several ways:
First, it boosts areas of performance that require top-notch cognitive function, like reaction time and hand-eye coordination. Second, it aids recovery from tough matches, games and workouts. Both of these sleep benefits covers all sports. Coaches and athletes have known about the importance of sleep for years and many professional sports teams have con- sulted experts in this area. One such expert is Dr. Charles Czeisler, director of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, for advice and guidance in the area of sleep and athletic perform- ance.
The U.S. Olympic Committee began taking the issue of ade- quate sleep seriously in 2005, when it consulted with sleep spe- cialist Mark Rosekind, a former NASA scientist, to help redo rooms at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and at the 2006 Torino Olympics.
Out went twin beds; in came plush-top mattresses, blackout
curtains, thermostats set to cool temperatures and reliable alarm clocks.
Rosekind and his colleagues pushed for the Olympians to get nine to 10 hours of sleep a night, not the five to seven most young adults manage.
"People need to be as smart about sleep," Rosekind once said, "as they are about diet and exercise." FORZA gives back. We offer an easy way to promote our FORZA products and receive a 12.5 percent rebate back for all retail sales going through your club’s unique code for retail pur- chases made through our FORZA website shopping cart. You can use your code in any correspondence to your club or wrestling group in your circle of influence. Let me know if you want your own code. Contact me at:
Lee@ForzaByKemp.com
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