Everyone knows that sleep is important, and yet so many people don’t get enough of it. Sleep is necessary for anyone, but if you’re training on a daily basis, it’s even more important that you sleep well and long. Of course, getting enough sleep is easy to talk about, but it can be difficult to actually pull off. Here are five tips to help you get enough sleep every night so that you can get the most out of yourself in training the next day.
Plan ahead
A big reason lots of people don’t get enough sleep is because the day gets away from them. You get home from work, do chores, make supper, train, and by the time you’re ready to wind down, it’s already past your bed time. Getting to sleep at a reasonable hour should be easy, but it’s not. You plan so well to fit your training into your daily schedule, so now it’s time to plan to work your sleep into the mix, too. If you schedule things well, you’ll be in bed on time and get enough sleep to help you crush tomorrow’s workout.
Watch the caffeine
Everyone is different when it comes to caffeine, so you have to figure out when your cut-off needs to be each day. You probably know how late is too late for a cup of coffee, but sometimes you forget or simply ignore that personal rule and have one later in the day anyway. It might be nice to have a coffee in the moment, but you’re going to regret it when you’re lying in bed awake past midnight, and even more so when you’re sluggish in the next day’s training session. Monitor the caffeine intake if you want to get the most out of yourself in training.
Cut the screens
You know this already, but it’s worth repeating: turn your screens off before bed. It’s very easy to get distracted by your phone, laptop, tablet, or any other screen, but if you can force yourself to turn them off and instead read before going to sleep, you’re going to get much more sleep and much better quality rest.
Ditch the watch
Watches with sleep technology can be helpful. They can give you sleep scores and let you know if you are well-rested or if you need to improve your sleep patterns. However, this can cause sleep anxiety. You don’t sleep well one night and your watch tells you so, and then the next night you want to sleep better to get a higher sleep score, but that actually stops you from falling asleep. It’s a bit confusing, but it happens to a lot of people. If you’re finding that your sleep score is causing you anxiety, leave your watch in a drawer and try to sleep the old-fashioned way.
Skip morning workouts
Still on the topic of sleep anxiety, it can be tough to fall asleep when you know you have an early workout the next morning. You lie awake as you beg your mind to let you sleep, but it constantly eludes you. If this happens to you often, it might be time to move those morning workouts to another time of day. You could be amazed at how easily you fall asleep when you don’t have the self-imposed pressure of needing to get up in a few hours.
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