There is a reason that sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture! Sleep, or lack thereof can seriously affect your life. If, like me, you are hustling hard in your life and you’re trying to pack it all in, you’ll be needing to prioritise sleep, because if you don’t, your health will suffer 😵
Me and sleep are like a Mama bear and her cub 🐻… I will protect my sleep at all costs, and watch out if you get between us!! Seriously though, after years of training hard and early mornings cutting into my sleep time I have learnt that sacrificing sleep will ultimately be a false economy. I know there are narratives out there telling us all to harden up, sleep less, do more, but really, if you are pushing your body to perform you need to reward it with the rest it needs 😴
Top sleep tips:
💤 Adjust your training load in line with your ability to recover
💤 Try to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day, routine is king for sleep, so turn off Netflix (no you really don’t need to watch just one more episode! I’m talking to myself here) and go to bed. Your favourite characters, the chore you wanted to get done, the one more task. They will be there tomorrow and your sleep is more important.
💤 Have a bedtime routine. For as long as I can remember I have read before bed. Reading slows down my mind, stops me from thinking and sends me off into blissful slumber. Not a reader? Listen to a podcast, meditate, write in a journal, just find a way to quiet the mind and ready yourself for sleep.
💤 Here’s a quick win. Set up the blue light blocker on your phone. I mean ideally, we shouldn’t be on our devices, but let’s be real! If you are on your device at least adjusting this setting will help let your brain know it’s time to wind down.
💤 Sometimes sleep is sub-optimal, add in naps if you can, or at least just take a short rest, lie down, eyes closed, you’ll feel much better for it.
I get that these tips are all well and good, and some of you will be like, ‘Tanya, that all sounds like luxuries I don’t have!’ There are definitely just some seasons in your life where you don’t get as much sleep, and during these times you need to adjust your training so that you don’t overdo it.
Sometimes, less training is more, and quality training and sleep will trump quantity of training and sub-optimal sleep in the long term!
