One of the most important processes that you have to go through every single day is sleep. It’s the time where your body rests, recovering from injuries and replenishing your energy stores for the day ahead.
Sleep is essential for the body to be able to function properly. You’ve likely dealt with a bad night of sleep - it’s not easy to manage the next day when your brain is screaming that it needs rest. However, the good news is that there are things that you can do to ensure that you can improve sleep and, as a result, improve recovery.
Let’s take a look at three tips to improve your sleep and recovery:
Change Your Exercise Pattern
Whether you are training for bodybuilding competitions or you are just going for a daily jog, you need to think about when you’re exercising during the day. The time that you set your workout can have an impact on your sleep and how well it goes. The time you exercise can also impact how solid your sleep is at night.
The best time of day to grab strong liftwear and head to the gym is in the morning. You’ll have more time to recover through the day, which will improve your ability to fall asleep at night. You can even notice that you’ll wake up less during the night if you workout in the morning. It’s important to know that this is very individual - so, what works for you may not be the same as anyone else.
Eat Well Through The Day
Going to bed feeling hungry is going to interrupt your sleep. Instead, you need to think about eating well and balanced through the day to satisfy your body in your sleep. Avoiding calories before bed isn’t going to help you!
When your stomach is empty, your stomach sends signals to your brain to crave food, which can interrupt your sleep cycles. Not to mention that if you don’t eat well through the day, your muscles cannot recover properly!
Protein before bed can keep you feeling satisfied, aid in muscle recovery and ensure that you have a peaceful night’s sleep.
Build A Solid Routine
One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to think about your current routine and start to make improvements. Managing your circadian rhythm is going to help you to keep you recognising the cues that your body is sending out. When you get into a specific bedtime routine (sleeping and waking at roughly the same times), you will be able to recover faster. You give your body space to release hormones that are necessary for recovery and this can make a big difference to the way your muscles react. You can also do better for your energy when you are getting steady sleep every single night, improving your sleep in the long run!
These three ideas are the tip of the iceberg for recovery - there’s more that you can do but these will get you started!
