Sleep is one of the most important things you can do to improve recovery, boost the immune system, and make fitness gains.
When thinking about how much sleep you need, you must consider a few things:
- The optimal recovery you require based on your daily strain
- How much time you spend in the different stages of sleep (awake, light, deep, REM)
- Disturbances
- Respiratory rate
Below are my sleep stats from August 23rd. Even though I was in bed from 11pm to 5am, I only got 5 hours of sleep.
Quality of sleep is just as important as quantity.
REM sleep is the mentally restorative sleep stage where your body consolidates memory and learning.
Your target should be to spend 20-25% of your sleep time in REM sleep.
Deep sleep is the physically restorative sleep stage where your body restores muscular, cellular, and skeletal systems. 95% of human growth hormone is produced during deep sleep.
Your target should be to spend 15-25% of your sleep time in deep sleep.
If you want to check out a tool I use to improve my sleep quality click here.
