Sleeping more to improve more?

Would you be ready to sleep more to progress more? This is often possible by cutting off some evening activities: TV or other activities on your smartphone in the first place... Professional athletes sleep a lot, sometimes 11 hours a day or more. If I've read this a lot, I've often been surprised too. It seems huge to the, uh, relative, little sleeper that I am. Last night, first awakened in the evenings with friends and other weddings, I don't know the meaning of sleeping in. The fact that for a long time I had a busy job, Running Addict was active while having a fairly intense sporting practice... It necessarily requires not being a big sleeper!

 

Up early in the morning, active until the end of the evening... The times when I slept more than 9 hours in one night can surely be counted on the fingers of one hand! However, in the last few weeks I have learned a lot and thought about it! And I found a lot of interesting things in addition to comments on my own case.

This experience is mainly due to my new lifestyle since when I decided to leave my paid job. Being able to afford to work both at 7am and 10.30pm (the time I am writing this article) gives you enormous freedom. And in particular the one to sleep more. Or rather to sleep when my body asks for it. No waking up at 5:30 to make sure I'm sitting at my desk at 7:15 every morning as before. No waking up, so it's my body that decides when it's slept enough.

 

And I have to say that the last few days have been quite surprising. It's quite surprising at first, but the body is really disturbed. Accustomed to little sleep for years, he does not understand this sudden lack of awakening and continues to wake up at the same time. But it only lasts for a while... At first we force ourselves to stay in bed and as the body understands... And likes to sleep more!

 

READ >> READ: Manage your fatigue level during training to improve your progress

I am training more intensively in order to be up to speed for my triathlons this summer. More training = more fatigue = more sleep. You're probably going to tell me that it doesn't take much to surprise me because it makes sense. But I had never slept more than 8 hours a night on average. I was pretty much at 6 or 7:00 on average when everything's fine. Without feeling tired on a daily basis.

 

Since I've been trying to sleep more, there are clearly better feelings associated with it. And no, I don't get up much later. It is not fair to have left my paid job that allows me to do so. Three days out of five on weekdays, I get up at 5:30 am to go to my swimming training. However, I have made progress on getting to bed earlier to sleep more.

 

I am far from the 11 hours per night mentioned above for top athletes. But with an average of 8 hours of sleep I gained a complete sleep cycle compared to before! And I feel like I'm getting back from training much faster since I stopped sleeping.

 

In any case my little experiments continue... I have long done with my 7h per night... No damage. The extra training showed me a real "need" for extra sleep. And the experiment allowed me to see the benefits! When do we really need to sleep more? Would sleeping more be interesting at all levels, even if you don't feel like you need it?