Should you train when you are tired or is sleeping more beneficial...
When you look at your day, week and month what have you made time for?
You always seem to make time for certain things like playing with your kids, cleaning the house and watching Netflix.
But what about the practices in your life that are essential for your health. Are you making time for those?
Where does the balance between sleep, training and recovery fall? Is one more important than the other?
How can you find the perfect balance...
If you train CrossFit or HIT you are really smashing your body. Every squat, jump and pull breaks down muscle. This needs to be rebuilt later.
So how do you keep your body from breaking down…
Sleep.
Think of sleep as putting your car in for a service.
It needs daily repair and fuel.
Sleep is the process of recovering and bringing precious hormones back into balance. It removes emotional stress and rebuilds damaged muscles.
A great coach named Max El-Hag once told me...
“You can only train as much as you can sleep”.
As a guideline if you’re doing CrossFit:
For every hour on the training floor you should add an extra 30 minutes to your alarm clock.
This is on top of a base of 8 hours sleep.
Ideally you would go to bed earlier but if sleeping in is your only choice you should take it.
There are many other recovery methods which can be used to great effect. Sleep is the easiest thing to add straight away and you will see instant benefits!
So if you’re continually dragging yourself out of bed after just 6 hours of sleep there is no need to wonder why you can’t better your performance…
“Sleep is that golden chain that ties our health and body together”
- Thomas Dekker.