How Sleep Quality Affects Your Fitness Performance

How Sleep Quality Affects Your Fitness Performance : It’s common knowledge that not sleeping enough makes you irritable and affects your overall performance throughout the day, and sleep deprivation can have you feeling disconnected from everything happening around you. But how much does it really affect you, and in what ways?

There has been a lot of research about this topic, and while all of it points to the obvious – quality sleep at the right time and in the right amounts is essential to performing your best – let’s look into all the ways sleep quality can influence your fitness performance.

Sleep is Regenerative

While you’re asleep, your body is given the chance to heal and repair all the damage that happened to it throughout the day, damage that you might not even have noticed. When you work out or lift heavy weights, microtears might form in your muscles that are also repaired during the night when you rest.

Not sleeping enough might not leave your body with enough time to handle these tears and recover from your workout or training sessions, which can eventually lead to muscle soreness and an inability to move properly.

Makes Your Workouts Seem Easier or Harder

Think about it – if you didn’t sleep enough at night, you’ll be tired and irritable all day. The thought of working out when you’re feeling this way isn’t the best, and you might not even be able to work out at all. A study published in the Sports Medicine journal confirmed this, which is why it’s important to have a mattress that actually helps you fall asleep. A mattress for staying cool or one specially designed to keep back pain away and give your body ample rest is your best bet.

On the other hand, another study reveals that the better rested you are, the more likely you are to keep up with your workout routine.

Helps Your Body Stay Healthy

Sleep helps keep heart diseases and other health issues at bay, as well as bolstering the immune system and making sure you’re able to combat any disease that comes your way.

Falling sick regularly or being out of sorts is hardly ever good for your fitness performance, so make sure to get in enough every night!

You Might Make Mistakes

When you’re working out with heavy weights or doing high-risk activities like gymnastics, you really can’t afford to slip up or mess with your posture, which is exactly what will happen if you don’t sleep enough. It makes you more likely to make mistakes and makes it harder for you to concentrate.

In the fitness world, mistakes like this mean you’re going to injure yourself or slip up at a crucial moment and end up harming your sports career. So while it’s important that you stay punctual and regular with your fitness routines, it’s even more important that you show up to these routines at your best – which means sleeping enough.

Really, if you’re not getting enough sleep your body won’t even be able to benefit much from you working out.