Powerful Ergogenic Aid for Athletes: Sleep

I know this may seem like a bad attempt at humor, but it is my firm belief as a Coach, that many people vastly underestimate the importance of sleep on their health. All the great training that you put in every week can be for naught if you are constantly running low on sleep.  And for those clients that are struggling to lose weight, this could be the missing link. So read the rest of this blog to get the facts and then go take a nap.

1. Lack of sleep can raise your levels of cortisol. Cortisol acts as a stress hormone –think the old fight-flight response- and promotes fat storage. Not only will that slow down your weight loss, it will interfere with the synthesis of new muscle fiber. Your body does not do well with stress/inflammation and try to repair/rebuild at the same time.  This is common aliment of the type A folks trying to get too many things done or newbie triathlete who believes he can get in that extra work out because he is taking those “super supplememnts” and doesn’t need the sleep like other athletes.


2. Sleep is your repair time. According to Dr. Bal Rajagopalan, MD states that getting your 8 hrs. of sleep will increase your levels of HGH (human growth hormone.) HGH is very important for the repair process. There are some fitness magazines that talk about consuming whey protein before going to sleep to increase the HGH effect. I have yet to read about in any scientific journal.  And just drink a glass of low fat milk instead of buying some sort of powered whey protein mix.

Now, try to build in some more hours for sleep each day and watch your training results improve by technically doing “nothing”. Remember, at Coach K fitness, we work smarter.