Most lifters are well aware of the importance of training in their success. Many are aware that the appropriate diet is also important, so they pay at least some attention to that. But sleep and relaxation, especially the former, is often given little attention. In my view that is a major mistake.
Why Adequate Sleep Is So Important
Olympic-style Weighting training is especially demanding on your nervous system, much more so than regular weight training, bodybuilding or powerlifting. There is something about the challenges placed on the mind and body when you have to move weights as rapidly as possible (although heavy weights will never go very fast), and move the body very rapidly, with skill, that are especially demanding on the nervous system, in a way that only sleep can address.
Let me offer my own case as an example. When I was 18, I was moving into my prime as a weightlifter and was improving rapidly. I medaled at the Jr. Nationals (something akin to today’s American Open Finals in terms of prestige), and qualified to lift in my first Senior Nationals. The target of weightlifting’s governing body at that time (circa 1969) was to have no more than 10 or 15 lifters in each bodyweight category in the entire competition. There were no B or C sessions, so one had to be among the best in the country simply to qualify.
However, just before the Senior Nationals (which were held in early June at that time) my college semester ended and my father made me go to work for the summer at a new business that he had just bought – a shipyard. That job would require some fairly strenuous physical work (no working at an easy job in the office my father believed – you might be the boss’ son but you had to start at the bottom from a skill standpoint – as helper in refurbishing a ship).
My father’s new business was located 27 miles from my home. That may not sound like much in terms of distance, but the trip required me to travel from one side of NYC to the other, during rush hour. Even though I started this fairly physical job fairly early in the morning, it took me least an hour, in relatively heavy traffic, to get to work each day. Then, coming home at night, it took me 1.5 to 2 hours to get to the gym, where I trained after work. Intensely determined to train as I had prior to taking this taxing summer job, each evening I trained my usual three hours.
Within a couple of weeks, I started to suffer from sleep deprivation. I’d gone from an average of 9 hours of sleep per night while at school, to perhaps 6 hours a night on work nights. It was only a few weeks after starting this new schedule that I competed at my first Senior Nationals and I was starting to feel fatigued by the time the meet rolled around.
At that meet, I was able to make a personal record 285 lb. in the press (we lifted in pounds in those days) as a middleweight (165 lb.). But by the time I got to the snatch I had run out of gas and bombed out with a weight I’d made fairly easily a month before, at the Jr. Nationals (before I started my new summer job at the shipyard).
It was only later I came to realize that when one was sleep deprived, it affected the lifts where explosive power and technique were needed (such as the snatch) more than lifts that required mostly strength (such as the press). I also came to understand that being sleep deprived also contributed to my energy collapse after the press.
I returned home devastated by my “bomb out” and resumed my sleep depriving schedule for the balance of the summer. Throughout the summer, no matter how hard I trained, no matter how determined I was, I got worse. I was too ignorant at the time to realize that taking shorter workouts or cutting my days of training could have arrested or at least slowed my decline. Instead I was determined to train as usual, no matter how little sleep I was getting.
Recovering From Sleep Deprivation
By the time I returned to school, toward summer’s end, I’d lost 10 to 15 kg. off each of my lifts, and felt completely exhausted. Mercifully, once I was back in school and getting my 9 hours sleep each night, my lifts, after some lag, began to return very gradually, to my pre-summer level. The following spring, still in school and getting plenty of rest, I won the Jr. Nationals, earned the outstanding lifter award, and broke three Junior World Records.
That horrible summer of 1969 taught me a hard lesson in terms of the importance of sleep. Subsequent periods if my life where I was sleep deprived, because of the need to work a 9 to 5 job with substantial commuting time, led to major performance declines as well.
With 9 hours of sleep a night, I never seemed to get tired while training and always felt fully refreshed the next day (at least in terms of my nervous system). Without that amount of sleep I was a different, less powerful and skillful, lifter.
Now some people may be able to train hard with less sleep than I needed. And others may not be as affected by lack of sleep as I was. But I knew that, at least for me (and many others I’ve coached over the more than 50 years since), adequate sleep was easily the second most important factor in my success as a lifter, right behind training. If I could sleep deeply and long enough, I would improve almost continuously. If not, I would stagnate or decline. And this is true for many others.
Sleep Deprivation Again – Oh No!
I was very stubborn about training daily, so when I took on a full time job with an extensive commute, after graduating from college, I tried to keep that daily training up. It took me a while to accept that if I didn’t reduce my training I’d remain in a sleep deprived (and weakened) state permanently. Eventually, I reduced my training days to four per week and slept long hours on the non-training nights and weekends. Only after I did this did my lifting performance take an upward turn. My suggestion is don’t be as stubborn as I was. Balance your training and rest.
Lest you think my experience was a “one-off” (I was affected in this way but others aren’t) I have seen the negative effects of lack of adequate sleep on many of the athletes I’ve coached over the years. And that’s not because I’ve pre-disposed them to that by telling them about my experience.
In many cases, they simply just experienced arrested gains or significant declines, and when we’d look for possible causes, a reduced amount of sleep was often at least one of them. Training a lot can often benefit a lifter, but only if they are recuperating from their workouts, and adequate sleep is a very important part of that recuperation process.
So if you are not making the kind of gains in your lifting that you’d like, look at how you are training and how that might have changed recently. But also take hard at your sleep habits. If they are suspect, invest in improving the quality and length of your sleep. Even if that means you might have to train a little less to free up sleep time.
You may be surprised at how much more and better sleep helps you. And if you see no benefit, you can always go back to your old ways of lesser sleep. You have little to lose and much to gain by considering this important factor in lifting success.