Attention Young People: Go Back To Bed

If you're an athlete, you need to recover. Your body doesn't actually grow and adapt while you train - to a large extent that happens when you rest. Your nervous system needs sleep to repair itself. So does your body. 

But the chances are that you don't realize it, your coaches don't realize it and you're not getting it.

If that's the case, you're not alone. In America, most young people aren't getting enough sleep.In fact, most people aren't getting enough sleep, period.

Mark Rosekind, president of Alertness Solutions and a former NASA scientist, points out that 'There are lab studies that show that if you're an eight-hour sleeper and you get six hours of sleep, that two-hour difference can impact your performance so that it equates to how you would perform if you had a 0.05 blood-alcohol level.'

So sleep deprivation is serious.

How Bad Is The Problem?

The average American is so sleep deprived that the Center For Disease Control's pronouncement on the subject is called: 'Insufficient Sleep is a Public Health Epidemic.' To repeat: that's not some blogger with a sleepytime tea or a relaxation course to sell, it's the CDC. 

How sleep deprived do we have to be before the CDC calls it an epidemic? Well, try these facts on for size.

In the last month, over 30% of Americans fell asleep during the day without realizing it - until they woke up.

Doesn't sound that serious, huh?

The CDC says sleep deprivation is 'linked to motor vehicle crashes, industrial disasters, and medical and other occupational errors.' It goes on to warn that sleep deprivation is also associated with mortality and morbidity, addiction and mental health problems, diabetes and cancer.

But I Get My 8 hours, What's The Problem?

If you're an adult and you get your 8 hours that's great. It's unlikely - nearly 30% of US adults get less than 6 hours' sleep a night - but it's great. But if you're a teenager it's not enough.

The National Institute of Health says children need about 10 hours' sleep a night, adults 7-8 and teenagers 9-10.

And they're not getting it, or anything like it. 

The average high schooler - not college kids, high school kids, max age 18 - isn't getting 8 hours a night on the average school night.

And here's the kicker: the average high school kid isn't an athlete.

'Not only do athletes need sleep to improve on their athletic skills,' says Sara Madnick, PhD, a sleep researcher at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, 'but the restoration that occurs within muscles during deep sleep is important. If you don't get enough sleep it can be detrimental to your performance.'

See Also: The 10 Most Important Signs Of Sleep Deprivation

If you're an athlete you need more sleep. Your nervous system takes a beating, as well as your body, and you need to sleep to recover.

But it's not just sleep.  

It's Not Just Sleep, It's Recovery Too

Most young athletes don't do enough enough recovery when they are awake. With so much of life taking pace on screens, younger athletes are getting less of the active recovery, low-level activity and simple relaxation that also aid recovery.

So What Can You Do?

Assuming you're the athlete, you can address your recovery and sleep problems.

Obviously it's never going to be 100% accurate, but it will be close enough to let you build a picture of how much sleep you're getting.

What many people find when they first start keeping a sleep diary is that they're shocked at how little sleep they're getting. That's not surprising, and about a 2 to 3 hour shortfall is quite normal for a high school age athlete. 

Having begun your sleep diary, don't stop using it - we're going to use it to find out which sleep increasing methods work for you.The first one should be to set a bedtime and a wake time that allow you enough sleep. Work backward from the time you have to be up in the morning. If you need to be up at 7, you need to be in bed by 9 to get 10 hours' sleep. If you're used to significantly lower levels of sleep try starting with 8 hours and building up.

Make sure that you don't look at a screen for the hour before you go to bed and don't have caffeine after midday. Many of us are locked into a pattern where we use caffeine to stay awake because we're sleep deprived. Then when we need to sleep, we're too wired, so we do something - more often than not online, these days - that further damages our sleep patterns. Next day, we can barely keep our eyes open - so we reach for the caffeine, and round we go. Cut the caffeine out and soon you won't need it.

Make your room quiet. Turn off lights and screens. Set your phone to take messages and store texts after a certain time and pass them on to you in the morning. Turn off your computer and turn down music if you're listening to it. Don't drink alcohol or eat anything for two or three hours before you go to bed.

As for non-sleep recovery, that really falls under three umbrellas: relaxation, light activity and mental calm. Spend plenty of time physically relaxing, don't work yourself up about things you can't control (easier said than done, I know, but work on it), and don't spend too much time with screens. A good recovery activity is walking. It's nothing like intense enough for an athlete to experience it as anything other than rest, but it;s good for your joint surfaces and helps to relax you, making it an ideal recovery exercise. 

See Also: Why You Need To Sleep On It: Sleep Helps Your Brain Consolidate New Memories

If you've found this article useful, or you think I've missed something important out, get hold of me in the comments section and we'll talk about it!