Sleeping is an important aspect of having a productive day, yet most people don’t prioritize it as much as they should.
Sleep is essential even for individuals who do not perform any hard chores and simply sit at the office all day, and it is more necessary for those who exercise.
If you work out for muscle gain, you probably practice some rigorous routines that put a lot of strain on your muscles.
Is 7 hours of sleep sufficient to build muscle?
Although seven hours of sleep is plenty for a muscle-building routine, it is on the low side. If possible, you should relax for 8 hours, but 7 hours will plenty to allow you to rest, relieve muscular tightness, and prepare for the next workout session.
How Much Sleep Do You Need to Grow Muscles?
We must dissect sleep and its relationship to muscle growth, protein synthesis, and total recuperation from a workout session. Let us remove the gloves and go into the specifics of this critical topic.
We all know that sleep is crucial and plays a significant part in recuperation, but we need to look at how it influences muscle growth in terms of percentages.
Some of these benefits will outweigh the benefits of a diet, but you should not abandon the diet.
This has to deal with HGH, or Human Growth Hormone. HGH is known to be important in organ growth, overall recovery, skin development, muscular development, and everything else. It promotes growth, but we don’t know how it works.
We have growth hormone pulses, which are tiny bursts that occur every 3 to 5 hours. The pituitary glands signal the release of HGH at regular times, with the majority of it occurring during slow-wave sleep, SWS.
SWS is the third sleeping stage that occurs after sleep begins. SWS is the deepest sleep that occurs shortly after falling asleep, and it is during this time that the pituitary gland secretes 70% of the growth hormone.
This pattern implies that we should be as refreshed as possible quickly after sleeping. This implies you must guarantee that your room is cold and that everything is in order to get a nice few hours of sleep.
Sleep is important for muscular building, and studies show that longer sleep isn’t necessarily better than deeper sleep.
We must get enough sleep, especially because the pituitary glands release HGH during the first several hours of sleep.
A study discovered that extended sleep performs better for muscular building than shorter sleep. The researchers discovered that 8.5 hours of sleep vs. 5.5 hours of sleep resulted in 60% increased muscle mass.
This isn’t a one-night thing; it’s a way of life, so if you have a night of poor sleep, it won’t kill you, but it may become messy if you have a cumulative effect. You will disturb when your growth hormone pulses, affecting your muscular mass.
It’s not only about growth hormones; other elements come into play, too, and they all have something to do with sleep duration, the most important of which being Cortisol levels.
When we wake up, our cortisol levels are elevated, and the entire function of cortisol is to wake us up.
When you don’t get enough sleep, your cortisol levels drop in the morning and then rise throughout the day, which is the opposite of what should happen.
This suggests that a sleep-deprived person will have greater vitality in the evening than in the morning.
This imbalance makes it more difficult to fall asleep, and the cycle continues to worsen.
As the condition develops, RNA signaling is suppressed; RNA communicates what needs to happen to reach your genetic potential.
If your DNA is that of a 180-pound muscular man, your RNA will determine what happens to allow you to reach that weight.
You will never attain your full potential if your RNA signaling is suppressed, and cortisol disrupts RNA signaling.
This means that cortisol reduces protein synthesis significantly, pushing your body to utilize proteins in cells for energy. This forces you to deconstruct existing proteins rather than produce new ones.
Read also about Anadrol cycle
Sleeping Habits That Will Help You Gain Muscle
Everyone understands the importance of getting some sleep after a full day of exercise. In most circumstances, we do not consider how this sleep impacts us or how we should sleep. To get the most out of your slumber, you must develop good sleeping patterns.
This is critical because what you do in bed can effect what you do in the gym, and bad habits can sabotage your progress. Let’s break it down and figure out how to obtain more rest;
- Before you go to bed, there are two things you must do. The first is to stretch your body.
We always talk about the benefits of static training, but it only works if you do it correctly; doing it before a workout can diminish your output.
Stretching keeps your body fluid, which is important before going to bed since your tissues mend while you sleep. The muscles will shorten throughout this time, so make sure you retain them as long as possible.
- Another thing you must do is change the tightness of your bedsheets, which most people are unaware of.
We keep the bed sheets tight so that our ankles face down when we put our legs in.
So you’ll spend the next 8 or 9 hours with your ankles pointing down, which will result in tight calves, which you probably do every day.
You can’t gain enough calf flexibility, so you have to compensate with your knees and hips to go low enough during a workout.
The simplest approach to avoid this is to relax the bed covers before going to bed so your ankles face up and your feet may move.
- You should also purchase a flatter pillow to ensure that your neck relaxes in a more aligned posture with your body.
As your neck relaxes, your back and spine will have more room to rest, and you will feel better in the morning as a result.
It is also crucial to consider your sleeping position with the pillow; many people prefer to sleep on their side with one arm up under their head. This results in internal shoulder rotation, which is a major issue that is difficult to correct.
Because your forearm will be resting on the pillow and consequently slanted upward, your shoulder will be internally rotated for around 7 hours. To avoid this, place your arm behind the pillow, which will eliminate internal rotation.
- Another major difficulty for stomach sleepers is that they wreak havoc on their shoulders.
Stomach sleepers cause internal shoulder rotation considerably more effectively since they lie on both shoulders at the same time.
You will injure your shoulders and back if you lie on your stomach with your hands beneath your head.
You will lift your upper body, causing a lot of strain in your lower back, which will jam your spine and body into an extension for an extended period of time.
You can avoid these issues by turning over and sleeping with your hands behind your head.
This is an externally rotated position, and it is considerably safer because it will not cause shoulder injuries because it will not be carrying much weight.
- Because you hug your hip flexors up close to your body while sleeping in a fetal position, they stiffen.
Because you most likely sat in a chair for the majority of the day, you are developing adaptively shortened hip flexors, which is causing a slew of issues.
You can sleep on your side as long as you avoid bringing your knees up into your chest, which will cause your hip flexors to elongate and stretch. You can use a pillow between your knees to keep them in position as you sleep.
Conclusion
Sleep is essential for your training program, and you should obtain at least 7 hours of sleep per night, but 8 or 9 hours is preferable. You should pay more attention to your sleep patterns since muscles grow while you sleep, and regulating your sleep gives you better muscle development.
Most people consider exercise and diet when considering muscle growth, but hardly one considers sleep and recuperation time. Sleep may be more important than food in terms of muscle gain.