How successful trainees cultivate serene sleep
February’s Theme: Managing Burnout
Today’s topic: Engineering restful sleep
Let me start with a brutal truth: Sleep deprivation of any kind has been proven to make you fatter, weaker, stupider, and generally a sad little pissed-off panda.
If you have any kind of health, performance, or body composition goals, you can’t afford to gloss over SLEEP. Specifically, 7-9 hours every single night.
Now before some of you sleep-deprived goblins panic, understand that yes, sometimes life will throw you some shitty nights of tossing and turning or waking up to pee.
Just as you can’t directly control how much muscle or fat mass your body builds, you can’t directly control how much good sleep your body gets.
👉 But what you CAN control is your environment and behaviors in order to create the conditions for quality sleep.
Now, there are tons things you can do to help your sleep, and they’re all over the internet, so let me just cut to the chase with the handful of things that have helped my clients the MOST:
Solidify your sleep window
This means giving yourself the 8-hour window to actually sleep. So if you need to wake up at 7am, you need to be asleep by 11pm.
And in order to be actually asleep by 11pm, your ass needs to be in bed with a book (not a screen) by 10:30pm.
Which means you need to start winding down and getting ready for bed at 10pm.
So many grown adults throw hissy fits about having their own bedtime. Do what you want, but understand and accept the sacrifices to watch another Netflix episode.
Don’t go to bed hungry
This seems to be especially true for female bodies, which are more sensitive to the effects of fasting. (This is one of the many reasons I don’t recommend intermittent fasting)
If you have issues waking up at night, make sure you either have dinner late enough to not be hungry/peckish before bed, OR have a little protein+carb snack before bed.
I don’t mean gorge yourself with cookies at 9pm and roll yourself to bed, cuz that probably won’t help.
I mean get yourself a healthy, whole food snacky snack—bonus points for including real dairy, as it’s been shown time and again to help sleep (and also has the perfect carb/fat/protein ratio).
I like to have yogurt with jam or maple syrup mixed in. The wife likes a slice of sourdough with butter, salt, and a slice of ham, French style.
This keeps your blood sugar stable through the night so your cortisol doesn’t spike and wake you up.
Allow for transition time
I touched on this above, but you need to allow a little wind down time to signal to your body that it’s time for sleep.
A couple light stretches, deep breaths, nice hot shower or bath, and an old-fashioned book allow you to relax and prepare for glorious unconsciousness.
Similarly, allow transition time in the morning with a sunrise alarm, putting your feet on the ground after waking (no snooze!), and not touching your phone until you’ve at least got some coffee in your hand.
Transition time reduces stress. And reduced stress means your body sleeps better.
————————
Let me insert a quick warning here: I do not support taking sleep aids unless it’s a one-off during desperate times. Melatonin, CBD, basically anything other than a magnesium supplement is simply a band-aid while the wound underneath festers and gets worse. Take the time to fix your habits.
————————
I think we all know on a logical level that sleep is important. Challenge your beliefs that it’s outside of your control and pick one thing to improve. It’ll change your life and body.
So far this month we’ve covered a lot of ways to recover hard and FIGHT BURNOUT. You’re probably familiar (if not consistent) with most of them—gentle movement, food, sleep, yeah yeah coach DUH.
But next week I’m going to talk about the one thing that has helped me and my clients stay consistent with our health habits long-term, and actually feel good doing it instead of white-knuckling our way to “the end” (spoiler alert: there is no end; the end is when you die).
Stay tuned!
February Theme Schedule:
Week 1: Active recovery for blood flow and parasympathetic nervous system activation
Week 2: Nutrition for the raw building materials that a strong body needs
Week 3 (📍You are here): Sleep to allow the body to use the materials to build and repair
Week 4: The Dial Method for lifelong consistency
Love & muscles,
Coach Mac
Muscle Sherpa
