Can I sleep after a workout?

The mode of a person who is actively involved in sports is based on three principles: regular training, a balanced nutritious diet, and competently conducting the recovery class. Strict observance of these rules will help to achieve good results in the sports field. Otherwise, all the efforts of the athlete will be in vain. Therefore, it is important to be able to correctly organize the recovery process after visiting the gym. This rule is relevant for any sports discipline. In doing so, one must always remember that sleep is of key importance at this stage.

Thanks to the research, scientists have found that all systems of the body of a sleeping person continue to work actively. In their turn, complex physiological processes take place. Therefore, the question of whether it is necessary to sleep after sports activities is quite natural.But you can answer it if you analyze everything that happens in the body of a sleeping person.

Sleep structure

It must be said that the classification of sleep is based on the intensity of brain activity. The mobility of the eyeball and muscle tone are also recorded. Given these indicators, sleep can be divided into the following main phases:

1. Drowsiness is a period when a person is just beginning to fall asleep. He is able to perceive everything that happens, can analyze events.
2. Shallow sleep replaces the initial stage.
3. Slow sleep combines two phases at once. This stage is considered the most important, because the body concentrates resources on restoring the expended forces.
4. The last phase of sleep is called fast. It is during this period that dreams appear.

During a night of rest, a person repeatedly goes through all the listed sleep phases. Therefore, people during one night are able to see different plots in a dream. A complete sleep cycle lasts about one and a half hours.

Scientists have found that the interruption of fast sleep, that is, the last stage, has a negative impact on the human condition.Such an awakening instead of a rush of energy brings a headache and a feeling of weakness. From all this it follows that for a normal state of health an athlete should spend about two hours or forty minutes sleeping.

Daytime sleep after exercise - harm or benefit?

With regard to sleep after training sessions, a lot depends on the time of their implementation. Usually the desire to sleep is caused by a banal lack of sleep. For this reason, some athletes literally fall asleep on the go after excessive exercise. If this condition will be repeated with frightening regularity, you can bring the body to a complete exhaustion. Experts recommend sleeping after a day's workout only when sleep is really necessary for an athlete. In this case, it is desirable not to exceed the time limit set for this purpose - 40 minutes. Compliance with this rule will help not to disturb the already formed day regimen.

I would like to draw attention to another important point: if a person slept badly at night, he should not conduct a training session. In such a situation, classes will do much more damage to health than they will benefit.If possible, you need to sleep a little before going to the gym, or generally move classes to a more convenient time.

Optimal sleep duration

It is clear that only a night's sleep can provide a full-fledged recuperation of the body of an athlete. However, it is sometimes helpful to get some sleep during the day. Classes active sports activities themselves are an excellent means of dealing with insomnia. But with strong physical exertion a person cannot immediately fall asleep. Therefore, the load should be commensurate, you should not regularly expose the body to stress.

Now about the duration of sleep. As shown by clinical trials, only one out of ten people feels satisfactory after sleep, which lasts less than seven hours. Most people need an eight-hour night rest. This indicator is considered the minimum norm for people leading a sports lifestyle. Of course, much in this matter depends on the individual characteristics of each person. It is possible to determine the optimal duration of sleep by the state that a person experiences after waking up.If he feels a surge of cheerfulness and is in a good mood, then the dream was complete. Usually, athletes strictly maintain the mode of the day, so they go to bed at the same time.

Summarizing, we can conclude that sleep after exercise is sometimes necessary. But this should not become a habit. You should try to sleep at night, because it is night rest that promotes the full restoration of the body after the training process.

Video: how to effectively recover from workouts?