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Go To Sleep

What kind of creatine should I take? What sort of diet should I follow? What mobility routine will help my lifts in the right direction? These questions are all too common and flood every fitness discussion. I believe this is a misdirection on our part, we are looking for that one easy thing that will make “all the difference” in our strength or body composition.  While we seem to overlook the most valuable asset we have. What is the one thing you can do everyday to help put 20kg on your back squat? Sleep. To help you lean out on your new diet? Sleep. To solidify all the hard work you’ve put into your technique? Sleep. You. Have. To. Sleep.

You’re Drunk

First of all, if you’re chronically depriving yourself of sleep you have the motor functions of a drunk person. Sleep deprivation can decrease reaction time, increase losses in focus and generally makes you feel weaker. The olympic lifts are extremely technical, and require you to be at the top of your abilities to get them down. If you are battling with a foggy brain from only getting five or six hours of sleep the night before; you probably aren’t going to be at your best trying to master the lifts  and drive your strength upwards. Secondly, sleep will help you out with your diet goals as well. Getting a good night of sleep can help reduce the risk for insulin resistance, and other metabolic diseases. Alternatively sleeping poorly can have negative impacts on the bodies ability to lose fat, gain muscle, and regulate hunger. Last but not least, sleep is when we etch new memories and motor patterns into our brains. If you put in a couple hours of solid practice on your snatch pull, but you don’t sleep that night… you won’t be retaining as much as you could with a full night sleep. So in short losing sleep will make you weaker, worse at lifting, and potentially at greater health risks in your day to day life.  

Quantity

Listen. I know, the new season of Kimmy Schmidt is pretty good, but you’re probably going to have to watch less tv and get off your phone. Traditionally we hear that the sleep standard we should be shooting for is seven to eight hours, and for your average person this might be okay. If you are a training in a strength sport three to five days per week, you are not the average. It is recommended that lifters get between nine to ten hours of sleep. Does that mean you will? No, probably not, but it should show you how far off base you are with the five or six hours you’re getting. You need to try to get as much sleep as you can every night if you want to make the best progress you’re capable off. If you have a crazy schedule, try to find time for a nap a couple days per week. Make sleeping a priority. If you slept poorly all week, be conservative on heavy workouts and stay safe, it’s not worth risking an injury.

Quality

 Here are a couple of things that can help you improve the quality of the sleep you’re already getting. First, limit screen time. For the two hours before bed refrain from watching tv or looking at your phone, the blue light can stimulate wakefulness. Some people will wear blue blocking glasses to use their devices, but then you have to be the guy who wears sunglasses inside at night, so it’s your call. Second, it can be helpful if you keep your room designated as a sleeping only room. Try to refrain from working, eating or watching movies in your bedroom, make is associated purely with sleep. Lastly, you’ll want to make sure that your room is as pitch black as it can be, and cool to boot. Blackout curtains and a fan go a long way toward improving sleep quality. Again, if you want to be that sort of person, you can go as far as to put tinfoil all over your windows to block the light.

Wrap up

We all want the quick fix, but there is no replacement for sleep. No supplement regimen, detox drink, or fad diet can help you if your sleep is dreadful. Sleep keeps you healthy, makes you stronger, and encodes the difficult technique we are all trying to master.  It’s not admirable to sleep only four to five hours a night, it’s unhealthy and limits your success in the long run. Try making sleep a priority, you’ll be shocked by how much better you perform.

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Get Under It or Die Trying

You’re looking at the barbell. Sitting there with your final heavy single loaded on the bar, which if successful, will bring that new PR. You look at it, that still small voice telling you it might be too heavy, the doubts start creeping in. The weight felt heavy on that last rep, you’re not sure you can make another one, even if it’s just one kilo more. Coach’s eyes wander in your direction, you can’t procrastinate any longer, you stand up and begin your setup routine (which you should have by the way). You close your eyes before you begin your pull, waiting just a moment longer than you usually do, hesitating in that final moment where you would normally just rip the bar from the ground on a lighter lift. The doubt has doubled at this point, and as you pull you’ve already given up, it’s just not going to happen, and it doesn’t. The people cheering you on in the background shouldn’t make a difference, it’s just noise. “Big pull, stay tight, c’mon!” None of that will help you in that moment, if you hear those people, it’s because your focus has left the lift and drifted off to whether or not you left the stove on at home (which you probably did, and your front door is unlocked too). I can’t say for sure what causes people to turn a potential lift into a heavy pull. I’ll give you my take on it…fear. A dictionary definition of fear is: a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined. The first time you attempt to put your body weight over your head can instill panic, I get it, I experience it too. If you never get scared, cool story bro, become a guru and teach the rest of us your secret techniques. However, if you’ve felt like a child staring at a storm drain with a clown in it, and you want to be a successful Weightlifter, you’re going to have to get comfortable with that feeling. There comes a time where you have to acknowledge and set that fear aside, it has to be compartmentalized and fiddled around with later, but not when you’re standing in front of that barbell. If you’ve never been skydiving I highly recommend it, it’s a lot of fun. Some people can’t fathom jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, but you can never appreciate what fear is, and isn’t, until you do something that would make the average person squeeze their glutes tighter than a prison inmate in the shower. Same thing with Weightlifting, who in their right mind would take a bunch of weight and try to put it over their head. If you haven’t Snatched your own bodyweight, you’re still a beginner, you have a lot of room to grow (unless you’re 80 years old, even then, you’d be surprised). I’m not even going to comment if you aren’t able to Clean & Jerk bodyweight. I’ve seen some people that are really strong and have the mobility and technique to accomplish a bodyweight snatch, but one thing stops them, fear. I like to laugh at motivational quotes, especially cliché ones. “Feel the fear and go for it, ‘There is nothing to fear but fear itself,’ ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.” If it helps you to see those quotes, and they drive your fear away, that’s good, whatever works for you. For the rest of us, you just have to pull like you’re trying to wrench the Devil out of hell and pray to Pyrros Dimas that you get under it. It could be, that you need a stronger mental attitude toward the whole idea of getting under the bar. What if you lifted like your life depended on it, like someone had a gun to your head? If that was the case, which would you fear more? How would you overcome your fear? I don’t have those answers for you, nobody is coming to lift it for you, you’re going to have to figure it out yourself. Find something though, it could even be nothing (like learning to clear your mind, aka mindfulness). Whatever you choose to motivate yourself to get under that bar, do it. As for me, I tell myself…Get under it, or die trying.