Clearly, anybody who has raced a 24 hour, 48 hour or expedition event will attest to the dramatic effect sleep deprivation has on performance and recovery.  The devastating effect that poor sleep has on health and well-being was recently bought to the fore by the meltdown of players and coaches in the AFL who routinely take a plethora of legal uppers to get ready for night games and then prescription sedatives afterward to try and grasp some sleep. Getting the balance seems elusive.

Events to one side, quite often the juggling of exhaustive training loads with work, study and family comes at the cost of regular sleep.

Research over the past decade has looked to understand exactly what the metabolic and performance downsides are of disrupted and truncated sleep patterns.

Eve Van Cauter, Ph.D., (University of Chicago Medical School) in 1999, studied the effects of three different durations of sleep in 11 men ages 18 to 27. For the first three nights of the study, the men slept eight hours per night; for the next six nights, they slept four hours per night; for the last seven nights, they slept 12 hours per night.

Results showed that after four hours of sleep per night (the sleep deprivation period), they metabolized glucose least efficiently. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol (a by-product also in abundance post heavy resistance exercise) were also higher during sleep deprivation periods.

This has been linked to memory impairment, age-related insulin resistance, and impaired recovery in athletes.

Van Cauter said that after only one week of sleep restriction, young, healthy males had glucose levels that were no longer normal and showed a rapid deterioration of the body’s functions.

There have been some more recent studies link sleep deprivation with decreased aerobic endurance and increased ratings of perceived exertion.

What is the science behind this?

Glucose and glycogen (stored glucose) are the key athletic performance reservoirs.  Storing glucose in muscle and the liver is crucial for endurance athletes. The evidence is that the sleep deprived may experience slower storage of glycogen, which prevents storage of the fuel an athlete needs for endurance events beyond 90 minutes.

Elevated levels of cortisol may interfere with tissue repair and growth. Over time, this may affect an athlete’s ability to respond positively to heavy training, possibly contributing then to overtraining and injury. Of course, growth hormone secretion can be triggered by a number of natural stimuli, the most powerful of which are sleep and exercise. hGH is important for athletes as it acts to increase lean body mass by decreasing glucose uptake and increasing amino acid uptake and protein synthesis in skeletal muscle tissue.

Diet, exercise and sleep patterns work synergestically to elicit human growth hormone (hGH) secretion. The most prominent human growth hormone (hGH) output usually happens an hour or so after you go to sleep at night.  Denuding your necessary sleep requirements will adversely affect the volume of HGh secreted and potentially play havoc with health, fitness, mood, safety (cycle,vehicular) and general well being.

Remember, the cornerstone of modern periodised training is the alternation of adaptation and recovery, necessary so that sustainable improvements are made. Clearly, the more demanding the schedule, the more crucial the extent and quality of recovery. Get into the practise of using SPUTNiK or equivalent old school watch-based devices (manufactured by over-rated multi-nationals) to track, comment on and share your contextual-environmental variables such as sleep patterns along with your core measured data.

Some simple better sleep behaviours

All workouts require an active recovery including recovery nutrition and yoga. With high stress sessions such as bricks and time trials requiring active hydro-therapy post workout.

Regular sports massages to help clear up the metabolic waste after a tough micro-cycle and to ease pain and stiffness.

Insert regular cross training routines into your program.

Extend nightly sleep for several weeks to reduce your sleep debt before competition.

Maintain a low sleep debt by obtaining a sufficient amount of nightly sleep (seven to eight hours for adults, nine or more hours for teens and young adults).

Keep a regular sleep-wake schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same times every day.

Take brief naps to obtain additional sleep during the day, especially if drowsy.

Common sense (and medical studies) dictates you should avoid caffeinated drinks and foods — coffee, tea, many soft drinks, and chocolate — several hours before bed. You should also avoid alcohol and consume light evening meals 3 hrs before sleep, with no fluids 90 minutes before bed.

Written by Daryl Foy.  For more interesting articles, visit AltDirt.