Tired again

Struggle town today. I feel like every few days I write a post talking about how tired I am and the importance of sleep. This is another one of those.

My current tiredness is entirely self inflicted, the cause being that common issue of trying to do too much in too little time. One of the most common first world problems going around. It isn't that I have any pressing issue keeping me awake at night or preventing me from going to bed, it is just that by the time I get all my things ticked off my list it is usually 30 minutes later than I want it to be. Something I keep telling myself that I need to get better at and then consistently failing at.

The importance of sleep sort of goes without saying and is something I have written about numerous times before. I think science is starting to understand more and more how important it is to our long term mental health and for an athlete sleep is even more important as it is where we do the bulk of our good recovery work. Without enough sleep we are hamstringing the efficiency of our training. We don't get as many gains from the training we do because we aren't recovering enough at night and the training we do is reduced in quality because we are starting the sessions too fatigued.

These above points are all very important, however, for me the most significant effects of insufficient sleep is how it actually makes you feel. Everything is harder. Getting out of bed, finding motivation to work hard, clarity of thought during training and work. All of it suffers. Not to mention personal relationships that are affected because you are tired and irritable.

When you are tired it is much easier to justify missing a session, you aren't thinking very clearly and your motivation levels are low and so sometimes it is just easier to stay in bed. This can then affect long term training consistency. When you are training, the tired brain can find it very hard to focus on the purpose of the session, meaning the sessions can be a bit unfocused or done at a sub optimal intensities. This missing or poor quality training can then further the lack of motivation becoming a vicious circle.

Yep, for sure lack of sleep is a major barrier to effective training, but unfortunately it is also a very common one among working athletes and one that probably doesn't get the recognition it deserves. People often choosing to address other, less significant, gaps before spending any thoughts on how to get more sleep.

For me it is definitely an area that I know I need to do better. Does it mean I will get better, really not sure. But I am going to be giving it a darn good crack tonight.