Slept Through The Workout|Rest Matters

The alarm went off; and I shut it off.

Yup, I slept through the workout. In my slumber I reminded myself that rest matters. Then I enjoyed a bit more sleep and some much needed recovery time. And guess what? I didn’t beat myself up for missing a workout. I know rest matters and I need more sleep.

  by  Perfecto Insecto 

Too often it is easy to find reasons to beat ourselves up. But life happens. Particularly with our health we need to be able to listen and adapt to how our bodies are responding. This morning was one of those times for me. It was a late night and I haven’t been sleeping too well. When the alarm went off, I knew that I should sleep through the workout.

But I think it is important to understand which things to be flexible on in our fitness. Rest is an easy one, since there is a ton of data backing the importance of sleep.

The reality is I should be getting more hours of sleep every night, not just on a few occasional days. That’s on my list of things to work on. (What are you working on?)

Back to the research. I found an article in New York Times entitled To Improve Fitness, Try Sleep.

For two to three weeks, the athletes maintained their regular schedules, sleeping and working out as usual. They took part in sprinting and hitting drills to measure their performance. Then the players were told to extend their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks.

After increasing sleep, the athletes performed better on all the drills.

Great article and it points out how we can actually perform better when we get more sleep. There is a balance, since you can find research that identifies problems with oversleeping. But frankly, I can’t think of anyone that I know who even approaches “oversleeping”. Life is just too full of fun things to sleep through it. As Caribou Coffee says, “Life is short; stay awake for it.”

Lack of sleep could also be an underlying reason for Killing your Fitness. I found this post called Sleep Your Way to Better Fitness:

Most people fall off the exercise wagon after about three weeks. Their motivation for it crashes when they do not maintain or change to healthy sleeping habits. Without enough sleep, it becomes difficult to get motivated to go out and get proper exercise. In fact, the main excuse for not getting enough exercise is either being “too tired” or having “no time.”

…

By building proper sleep into the fitness routine up front, more time is created overall. As the process becomes more streamlined, productivity goes up. Often, there is also less wasted downtime during the day. Someone who is rested and fit doesn’t need to head off to quiet corners or feel the need to head to a fast food joint for a break as often as others. Someone who isn’t as tired likely won’t be as hungry either.

So am I justifying my sleepy morning? Perhaps.

But I feel rested. It was okay that I slept through the workout; rest matters. Now I need to wrestle if rest matters enough to work on permanently changing my schedule to get more sleep. We’ll see …

About Troy Pesola

Troy is the founder of Cube.Dweller.Fitness. He's an innovation catalyst in several areas of life including business, marketing, and process improvement. Outside of work he's actively involved in fitness, health, and living vibrantly in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.