Many people dedicate a lot of energy to training and nutrition, they believe that to focus on one and neglect the other would be a complete waste of energy. But are you aware of the third essential building block of strength and hypertrophy?

Sleep

When it comes to fitness progress sleep is just as important as training and nutrition. When we sleep our body produces growth hormone, an essential compound for building muscle.

Athletic performance is directly linked to sleep. Studies done on Olympic athletes have demonstrated that depriving athletes of four hours of sleep resulted in far lower athletic performances. This means that not only is your recovery limited but so is your training potential when you are in the gym.

Sleep also plays a role in our body’s ability to use fat, meaning sleep deprivation can negatively affect your body’s ability to use fat.

On top of that, your cognitive abilities, reasoning and mood are also affected by sleep deprivation, meaning you may make poor nutritional, training and life choices whilst sleep deprived.

Given how important sleep is, you should make it a priority. Here are 5 tips you can use to ensure you get a good night’s sleep.

1: No stimulants later in the day

Caffeine takes around 10 hours to fully pass through your system, so try and limit your stimulant intake as much as possible. There is a certain amount of personal preference here, if you can have a coffee at 8pm and go to bed at 10pm without issue, then do that, but if you find caffeine is affecting your sleep consider cutting it out after 12-2pm (if you would go to bed between 10-11 pm).

2: No meals 2-3 hours before bed

Try not to eat any big meals in the last couple of hours before bed. You may find you’re kept awake by your body’s digestion. At the same time don’t go to bed hungry as this can also keep you awake. Consider eating a large meal 3-4 hours before you go to sleep and then have a smaller snack before you go to sleep if you are still hungry.

3: Turn down the temperature and the lights

Our body temperature naturally rises and falls throughout the day and night as part of our circadian rhythm. Later in the day our internal body temperature begins to drop to signal that it is time to sleep and around two hours before we wake our body temperature begins to rise to signal that it is time to wake.

This is why eating a large meal before bed is a bad idea as the energy we expend in digesting that food will increase our internal body temperature.

Try to make your bedroom cold and dark in order to get a good nights sleep.

Lower the lights around the house in the last couple of hours before bed. Rather than sitting in a room with the main light on put on a couple of smaller lamps to lower the light levels, this will signal to your body that it is night, and time to wind down.

4: Put the phone down

Try not to look at screens an hour before bed. Looking at screens provides a lot of stimulation for our brain which is the opposite of what we want when we’re trying to sleep.

If you do need to look at a screen, then I would recommend using a blue light filter.

You may already have a blue light filter built into your phone/tablet but you can also buy external filters. Blue light is what gives our brains that buzz we want to avoid.

Instead, of looking at screens before bed you could read, meditate, write in a journal or listen to a podcast. Looking at screens provides a lot of stimulation for our brain which is the opposite of what we want when we’re trying to sleep.

5: Alcohol

Contrary to popular belief, a ‘night cap’ is going to harm, not help, your sleep schedule. Alcohol interrupts our body’s ability to sleep, it requires a lot of energy to break down and it disrupts our natural sleep rhythms.

Even if you drink so much you pass out there is a difference between sleep and sedation. The kind of sleep you experience when you are black out drunk is not really sleep at all, you don’t get any of the regenerative benefits of sleep you’re just unconscious. If you are going to drink, try not to drink excessively (good advice in general, not just for sleep) and try to finish earlier, have your last drink no less than 2 hours before bed.

Conclusion

Now you know the importance of sleep and five ways to improve your sleep quality. Remember that sleep is just as important as training and nutrition when it comes to your fitness goals and making it a priority will help you recover, grow muscle and perform better.