Sleep more, exercise less!

I wanted to take a little bit of time to write about the topic of stress management, as I feel this is a topic that is often misunderstood by most people.  It’s also one of the most important factors in your ability to attain your health and fitness goals!  Without good stress management, you will never be able to be as healthy as you can be!

Let’s think of our body’s internal stress management systems like a bank account.  We make deposits and withdrawals, but the higher we keep the balance the healthier we’ll be.  So what are the things we do to make withdrawals from our account?  Withdrawals come in many forms including:

• Emotional stress
• Sleep deprivation (less than 7 hours in a night)
• Exercise (varies based on intensity and duration)
• Caloric restriction
• Caffeine use
• Alcohol use

How many of these things apply to you?  A bunch of them right???  If so, what are you doing to manage this stress?  Some of the things we can do to make deposits to the account include:

• Meditation
• Sleep (8+ hours per night)
• Walk (at a leisurely pace)
• Exercise appropriately
• Eat enough food
• Use less caffeine

The next thing I’m going to say might surprise you, but the truth is you may need to exercise less to attain your health and fitness goals.  If we think about all of these factors affecting the same bank account, we have to consider them as a whole.  That means if you’re extra stressed at work, and you’re sleeping less than 7 hours per night, you should only be exercising a couple days per week and it should be moderate intensity.  I make my money off of people exercising, but I’m telling you to sleep more and exercise less.  The more withdrawals you’re making, the more deposits you need to keep your account in the positive.  Jim Laird

http://athlete.io/4479/your-new-lifestyle-relax-your-way-to-high-performance/

always talks about earning the right to train.  To me that means you’ve made enough deposits, to make a withdrawal.  If you haven’t made the deposits to cover the withdrawal, then you don’t get to workout (or you need to ratchet the intensity down appropriately).

If we think about this concept from an evolutionary perspective, this totally makes sense.  Our caveman predecessors didn’t have to deal with 45 minute commutes in metro traffic, bills, or bosses that drive them nuts.  On top of that, they mostly laid around all day, with only punctuated bouts of work.  In fact, anthropologists tell us caveman only worked around 15-20 hours a week.  This is the environment our genes are designed to operate in.

We also can see this plaid out with the professional athletes today.  If you look at most top level athlete’s they workout hard, but they also rest hard.  The joke around gyms has always been that a professional bodybuilder’s day looks something like:

• 9:00am: Wake up and eat massive breakfast
• 11:00am: Workout
• 1:00pm: Eat a massive lunch
• 1:30pm: Nap
• 4:30pm: Wake up and eat a snack
• 7:00pm: Eat a massive dinner
• 10:00pm: Eat desert
• 11:00pm: Bed time

Somebody who’s doing this is surely earning the right to train.  Now, I understand that most of us don’t have the luxury of living like this, but we still need to earn the right to train.  If you have a week where your sleep sucks, and you’re stressed at work, consider taking a week off from the gym and just walking.  If you’re going through a period of extra stress in your life, do all you can to tighten down your diet and get extra sleep.  Keep your account in the positive, and you will see better results in all aspects of health and fitness.