Sleep is an Essential Component of Your Training Plan

 Lately my schedule has taken on an odd sort of irregularity.

I thought somehow that when I stopped being a "nine-to-fiver" and no longer had to get up at 5:30, that scheduling my workouts would be a lot easier.  Strangely, I'm finding the opposite to be true.  WIthout the discipline of the the alarm clock I'm staying up way later than I should, getting a lot less sleep than I should, and finding a lot more excuses not to get out on the road in the morning.

Lying awake last night at 1:30 AM, my mind whirring, I started thinking about how important rest and recovery is to both our minds and our bodies. 40% of the US population is sleep deprived - primarily from trying to squeeze too much into the day, and this deprivation is having all sorts of effects on our society, including an increase in traffic accidents and strained personal and work relationships.  What is this crazy aversion to rest that most of us have?

Ironically, lack of sleep may also make it more difficult to lose weight (fat being our second aversion). An article in Runners World reported that chronic sleep deprivation hampers the body's ability to process carbohydrates and boosts levels of a stress hormone called cortisol. These two changes make your body more likely to store fat.  The article recommends that we go to bed at the same time each night, including weekends, and wake up at the same time every morning.  Yeah..right.  And what about the effect of all this on our performance levels?

While research has shown that lack of sleep doesn't hurt physical endurance or strength, it can still compromise your performance. "A sleep-deprived person is physically able to run the same distance or lift the same weight, but the mental effects can have consequences," says Thomas Balkin, Ph.D., chief of the department of behavioral biology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. Moodiness, anxiety, and irritability are all effects of losing out on sleep. That can turn an ordinarily easy run into a struggle.

Fact of the matter is, sleep is part of your training plan - and should be considered as such.

The key is finding the right number of sleep hours for you, and this very personal. Some people need nine hours, others,  six and a half.

Frisca Yan-Go, M.D., professor of neurology and director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center recommends the following experiment to try on your next vacation:

Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up naturally--no wake-up call or alarm clock. By the fourth day, you'll have paid off your "sleep debt," and should wake up refreshed. Take note of how many hours you slept--that's your goal.

No vacation on the horizon?  Here's another method: Keep your wake-up time the same, but go to bed an hour earlier for the next four days. Still sleepy? Go to bed 30 minutes earlier. Can't fall asleep? Go to bed 15 minutes later. Experiment until you wake up refreshed.

Thinking about sleep as part of training is helpful to me...and perhaps will be helpful in my applying the same discipline to my rest as I do to my workouts.

• Currently 4.5/5 Stars.