You are tossing and turning all night long, you keep waking up and next thing you know your alarm starts blaring in your ear. We all go through nights from time to time when our sleep is terrible to we choose to do other activities that get us to bed late. The result ends up being that we get only a few hours of sleep and end up feeling like we didn’t sleep for even a wink the next day. But does getting poor sleep for one night really take its toll the next day on our workouts?
How Much Sleep Do We Need?
Generally speaking, we all perform at our best with roughly seven to eight hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. What you may not have known is that it actually doesn’t have to happen all at once. You could sleep for six hours during the night and then sneak in an hour nap and meet your quota. However, everyone’s rest needs are different, and genetics play a big role in determining how many hours that is. You may be someone that needs five hours of sleep or someone that needs nine hours of sleep. You have probably figured out by now how many hours is optimal for you.
One Day of Less Sleep
The good news is that if you suffer not getting enough hours one night, you don’t need to worry. Sure you may not feel like you have the most energy but really your body can totally survive normally with just one night that is a bit less of sleep than normal. You will probably add in a bit more caffeine and power through it anyway.
Continual Loss of Sleep
If you find yourself getting less than adequate sleep night after night, then you really need to think about changing things in your life to get in those hours each day. If you don’t then you could start to accumulate some sleep debt that will be hard to bounce back from. Over time, a lack of sleep could really start to wear on your body and performance too. When this happens things like your blood pressure starts to go up, your blood sugar levels become worse, etc.
All in all one night of bad sleep won’t affect your workout too much the next day. Just make sure you get adequate sleep the next night. Plus, a serving of POW will give you that extra boost your body is lacking from sleeping fewer hours the night before.
