Snooze your way to gorgeous glutes. Recline into rippling abs. If someone asks you if it’s leg day, say “no, it’s nap day”, because better sleep is fundamental to better muscle development.
To be honest, researching this article gave us one heck of a workout. There are more sites out there with “muscle”, “fit” and “HUUUGE” in the URL than we’d ever imagined. We were also relatively surprised by the interest shown amongst these sites to the idea that sleep impacts muscle growth. But it’s true – better sleep, better muscles.
We saw studies dating back to the mid-80’s. Some are still being referenced, some are discredited, and all are making a lot of HUUUGE claims (sleep will eat your muscles, nocturnal eating will reduce catabolic muscle loss, etc). But here’s what we’ve been able to determine as scientifically proven fact:
- Your body circulates growth hormone during sleep, particularly REM sleep. In men, it’s as much as 60-80% of the total daily circulation volume. As the name suggestion, human growth hormone is key to… Human growth. Especially muscles. Better sleep, ideally around 8 hours, is key to optimizing this circulation and it’s muscle building benefits.
- No matter how much” catabolic” sounds like “internal cannibalism”, you don’t need to worry about it unless you’re a bodybuilder trying to add a millimeter to those guns (and then…probably not). Yes, your body eats a bit of itself while you sleep. No, it isn’t a lot. Most of it happens in your gastrointestinal system, and you aren’t going to hear “hey, check out that lower intestine” any time soon.
- It seems obvious, but we’re at rest during sleep, and that means we use less energy. Using less energy allows our body to restore, and reduces muscle loss. So not only does better sleep facilitate processes required to build muscle, it also prevents your body from reducing muscles.
And what does that all add up to? HUUUGE muscle benefits of better sleep.
A Nite Hood™ helps with the heavy lifting of sleep-build development – part of your daily workout!