Friday, June 29, 2007

Fit Tip # 5 : Sleep The New Frontier

Personally I am, and am often surrounded by sleep deprived people. I know this sleeplessness abounds all over but for me I know it is largely a function of being a New Yorker trying to have a career and make a difference. Parents all over are suffering from sleepless nights, students are staying up doing their homework or other not so industrious things. Artists and other career minded individuals are up all night and this is potentially one of the most detrimental things you are doing to your fitness goals. If you are not getting enough sleep, you don't have the energy to work out and if you do still manage to get to the gym (kudos by the way, I don't if I haven't gotten enough sleep) you are more likely to hurt yourself and chances are you not getting maximum output for your efforts.

Additionally, you are not getting time for your body to recuperate, recover and rebuild. Your muscles need downtime, sleep that is, to rebuild the muscles. If you don't get adequate sleep you body does not have the time to repair the muscle. Your body treats working out like an injury, so if you're consistent with your efforts it's a constant cycle. When you weight train you are literally creating tiny tears in your muscles. You need recovery time for the muscles to grow, proper nutrition and sleep. The amount of sleep varies with each person. But you can pretty safely say somewhere between 7-9 hours. Quality of sleep is important as well but for now let's just focus on getting some of it. So do yourself a favor and set yourself up to achieve your goals and see results from all your efforts and get those ZZZ's.

1 comment:

Carla said...

#1 I love that you posted this at 1:16 a.m. I love that I am posting this at a not much later time.

#2 Give us more tips, Lise! We need them!

~C

Health blogs Top Blogs Add to Technorati Favorites