Quality hours of deep sleep can have an overwhelming effect on your bodybuilding results!!
Yes, you read that right.
Irrespective of how much you’re hustling inside the gym, bodybuilders and fitness freaks alike need to pay attention to their sleep cycle and the quality of those slumber hours.
However, while you’re on the lookout for the next best thing in the supplement market, don’t make the mistake of ignoring the importance of sleep. While the other methods are important too, sleep holds the utmost importance among bodybuilders.
Quality nap helps in repairing and regenerating the body’s damaged tissues, especially muscle tissues, overnight. This helps in accelerating the process of muscle building.
Moreover, it is essential to prioritize the importance of sleep for bodybuilders, as it helps to relax the body and support hormonal regulation.
Generally, bodybuilders go through intense workouts and weight-lifting exercises to target their muscles. The body and muscles get extremely worked up and sometimes damaged too.
Therefore, good quality sleep is extremely crucial for better muscle recovery and growth.
In this blog, we will explore the importance of sleep for bodybuilders, along with various tips on how to optimize your sleep to attain maximum benefits.
Why Do Bodybuilders Need Good Sleep?
While there lie many reasons behind the need for a good night’s sleep among bodybuilders, here are some of the most important ones which should be highlighted:
- Fast muscle recovery
- Increase in energy levels
- Better testosterone production
- Improved immunity
Interestingly, how much sleep bodybuilders need is directly influenced by the factors mentioned below.
#1. Muscle Recovery
While we sleep, the body produces increased amounts of growth hormone and carries out protein synthesis. These two are the major benefitting factors for muscle growth.
Also, the body goes into a state of complete relaxation and reparation. It is during this time that there is a fall in energy consumption, which takes off the exertion from the body and lets it heal.
Research has also led to a belief that there is a significant brain cell restoration, helping you experience better emotional and cognitive health.
#2. Increased Energy Levels
Sleep is important in maintaining energy level and keeping it up throughout the day. Not just for bodybuilders, it is an essential need for everyone.
However, in the case of bodybuilders, they regularly do lots of heavy workouts, which can make the body tired and exhausted.
For increased muscle growth and strength, it is important for the body to be relaxed and at ease. Hence, sleep helps in casting away all the exhaustion and fatigue to enhance the growth of muscle tissues.
#3. Increased Testosterone Production
If the person is deprived of good sleep, the hormones get disrupted and that might result in hormonal imbalance, disturbing the muscle-building process.
Studies have also shown how sleep deprivation can cause a decline in T-levels. In fact, your morning testosterone levels heavily depend on the total sleep time as most of this hormone gets released during sleep.
Most bodybuilders know the importance of free-flowing testosterone for muscle gain.
That’s why getting enough sleep is a sure shot way to maintain your testosterone count for better muscle growth and recovery.
#4. Improved Immune Function
This might seem a little interesting, but an improved immune system is another great example of the importance of sleep in bodybuilders.
Bodybuilders have to go through intense training, which can compromise their immune functions. It is difficult to identify but can be fatal to health.
Therefore, it is extremely advisable for them to get long hours of sleep to keep their health in check.
Well, these are some pretty good reasons to steer clear of sleep deprivation and to prioritize naptime to avoid health issues. Also, taking care of these points might even get you better bulking results than you might have expected.
How Much Sleep Do Bodybuilders Need?
A night of adequate and good quality sleep is necessary for bodybuilders to assist them in training and recovery. But how much nap do bodybuilders need essentially?
Well, the amount of sleep usually depends upon the physique of the bodybuilder, the kind of workouts, and his/her recovery needs.
A study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine emphasizes the importance of sleep duration for athletic performance. Anything less than 7 hours of sleep is shown to increase the chances of respiratory infections.
Moreover, it’s often suggested that athletes need more sleep than the average adult’s recommendation to recuperate from physical and psychological stress.
Bodybuilders often endure the stress of their own high ambitions as well as the pressures of competition.
It’s, in fact, common for them to train away many hours of their day and sustain injuries in the process. Naturally, it’s justified for these bodybuilders to need longer durations of restful sleep.
Considering that, the usual recommendation for bodybuilders is at least a duration of 7-9 hours. Some may also need 1 or 2 hours more than that. Remember that there’s no golden hour here that will suit every bodybuilder.
Also, bodybuilders getting less than 7 hours of sleep show lesser muscle growth and bulking compared to those who sleep for 7 to 9 hours.
Hence, ideally, all bodybuilders should aim for at least 8-9 hours long uninterrupted sleep for proper training and recovery of muscles.
Nevertheless, always ensure that you get enough sleep during the night, but not too much. While less sleep time can deprive the bodybuilders of desired results, too much of it can also do the same and lead to tiredness and grogginess.
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How Much Sleep is Too Much When Building Muscle?
It is natural to get the idea of sleeping longer after learning the benefits of good sleep. This is what most bodybuilders do; instead of getting quality sleep, they sleep for too long.
Most experts suggest getting an average of 7 or 8 hours of sleep for bodybuilding. But unnecessarily extending this duration with the idea of increasing muscle growth is an absolute fallacy.
If you are getting more than 9 hours of sleep regularly, you are not going to get any additional muscle growth or energy. Instead, it is possible that it might lead to multiple negative effects on your body.
Furthermore, adequate sleep duration enhances energy levels. But, on the same hand, too much sleep can decrease energy levels, leaving you tired and exhausted.
When you sleep too much, your body experiences decreased physical activity, which hinders the metabolic process.
Hence, if you begin feeling lethargic or groggy, you might be oversleeping and must stop doing it if you want a lean and fit body.
It is important to note that everyone’s body is different, and hence the amount of sleep or rest needed may also vary. Various factors such as age, weight, activity levels, and health conditions affect how much sleep for muscle growth is needed.
To make the understanding simple, here is a section on how sleep affects bodybuilding.
Effects of Sleep on Bodybuilding
Hormonal balance, faster metabolism, and muscle recovery are the most important benefits of sleep for bodybuilders.
However, the list is not just limited to these three benefits. There are several other ways through which sleep affects bodybuilders and the benefits it can provide are many.
#1. Cardiovascular Health
Multiple studies and extensive research have proven the fact that less sleep negatively impacts the heart health of bodybuilders.
Generally, extensive workouts and exercise wear out the body and can put extra strain on the heart. This is the reason why most bodybuilders land up in hospitals due to a bad heart.
According to a study from the Journal of the American Heart Association, irregular sleep duration can cause cardiovascular issues, such as atherosclerosis.
Bodybuilders who get enough sleep, and do not overdo it, have been seen to have better cardiovascular health than those who don’t.
Hence, there is no doubt in saying that there is a huge importance of sleep for bodybuilders, as they are constantly putting their bodies through strenuous training.
#2. Recovery from Injuries
Sleep plays a vital role in the reparation process of the body. Any injuries sustained during heavy workouts need to heal well, which is taken care of by a night of good-quality sleep.
A lot of times bodybuilders can get internal injuries such as muscle tears and inflammation, which can worsen over time. Also, if not healed soon, they can cause more injuries in the future, affecting the bodybuilding process.
Hence, it is crucial to get adequate sleep, as it promotes the healing process internally, reducing the recovery time.
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#3. Sleep Affects Appetite
Poor quality of sleep has been linked with appetite, and there’s a multitude of evidence to back it up. When the body does not get enough sleep, there is eventually an increase in appetite and a decrease in energy levels.
Often, an increase in the appetite leads the bodybuilders to eat more than required and can cause unhealthy weight gain.
Of course, you don’t want extra fat on your body in the middle of bodybuilding, right?
Therefore, keep a check on whether you’re getting enough sleep or not so that it doesn’t hinder your progress.
#4. Better Mental and Cognitive Function
Sleep is essentially required for good cognitive functioning. Memory management, decision-making, and memory consolidation are the perks of good-quality sleep.
Usually, bodybuilders spend so much time on their physical goals, they tend to ignore their mental well-being. Often, this is accompanied by inadequate or poor sleep.
All this can cause negative effects on cognitive as well as emotional well-being. Depressed mood, anxiety, forgetfulness, and decreased focus are some of the issues that tag along.
Thus, the best way to stay mentally fit is to ensure you get enough sleep while bodybuilding.
These were the four major effects that sleep has on a bodybuilder’s health, which are generally not paid attention to. Therefore, we mentioned them in detail so that you might get a broad clarification on how much sleep bodybuilders need and why it’s so important.
Final Word
Bodybuilders need good quality and duration of sleep in order to regulate their muscle growth, manage hormone levels, and improve muscle recovery. This blog briefly mentions the need for adequate sleep for bodybuilders and the effects it has on them.
To achieve optimum fitness results and to stay healthy, the optimal sleep duration is 7 to 9 hours for bodybuilders. However, it can vary from person to person.
Further, oversleeping can cause equal problems as inadequate sleep does. While it is always suggested to get at least a 7-hour sleep, overdoing the duration might actually impact your health negatively.
Therefore, it is important to pay attention to the quality and duration of your sleep and optimize it according to your health and fitness needs. As a bodybuilder, this might help you understand how much deep sleep for muscle growth your body needs.
Have you tried any methods to adjust or optimize your sleep? We would love to hear about your experiences and how this blog might have helped you. Let us know your testimonies in the comments below.
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