Your way of sleep can have a big impact on the gains you will see from your workouts. Today I am going to illustrate you how specific sleeping habits are possibly disturbing your ability to build muscle and remain injury free.
The first thing you want to do before you get to bed is stretching. I know that many people say that static stretching before a workout isnt good, but do you know why? Well, the reason is twofold. You are interrupting the stored motor patterns that your body has to make movement efficient and memorable, when you stretch before lifting. That means, the new muscle length provided by the stretching, your bench press movement will not match up with the one that is stored.
The second thing which occurs is that the increased length disrupts the overlap of muscle fibers and disrupt with the strength of contraction. If that happens you can expect to see a decline in your strength levels and force output at the exact worst time that you would want to happen just before you work out.
Next, make sure to adjust the sheets at the end of your bed before going to bed. Because the tightness of your sheets will directly impact the tightness of your ankles on a long period. Your ankles will be pulled into plantarflexion because of the sheets which are tucked in to the end of your bed. This tighten up your calves and your ankles will lose mobility in the long run.
Healthy shoulders are the highest importance for a big upper body. The key is to limit the tightness that is likely to happen just by avoiding common but bad sleeping postures.
If you lay on your side with your hand under the head, you have to make sure you dont do this on top of the pillow. This will instantly rotate your shoulder and leads to tight posterior shoulder capsules. Avoid this by placing the hand under the pillow. That helps to restore some lost external rotation.
Same thing can happen while lying on your stomach. The arms intenally rotate at the shoulders to support your head in the pillow. Even worse, your lower back takes a beating as you compress your lumbar spine and adaptively short your lumber paraspinal muscles. Please avoid this! I can garuantee you that this leads to the all too common low back pain. I used to sleep on my stomach ever day all night long and let me tell you, the back pain I am having recently are no joke.
The best way of sleeping is either on your back with the sheets loosened at the end or on your side with the legs straight and a pillow between your knees. In both ways you are minimizing the damages which you are doing to your body for spacious periods of time every night and giving your body a better chance of making pain free gains.
The last point is, after you wake up make sure to immediatley start the rehydration process by drinking two 12-16 ounce glasses of water, because you gone a long period without drinking any water so you will want to get this in you to provide environment for muscle gains. Of course, never underestimate the value of good sleep. Cortisol will be released by your body the less sleep you get. This will directly counteract the benefits of testosterone and lead to less muscle. Sleep as much as you can!!
That is it for now, I hope this is helpful for you.
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