THE SKINNY ON SLEEP-PART ONE

Healthy sleeping patterns are crucial to your health and fitness. Poor sleeping patterns and poor sleep quality can have a disastrous effect on your recovery from training and you’re ability to cope with physical and mental stress. While insomnia can have a range of medical causes which you may have to go and see your G.P. about, this post will describe some tried and tested nutritional, psychological, and restorative methods that healthy, active people can use to make sure they get their zzzzzzs and wake up feeling fresh and alert and ready to take on the new day. Some of these tips are backed up with existing and emerging scientific literature, and some have been tried and tested by myself, my family, my personal training clients, and the sports teams I have worked with. If you are struggling with your sleep I hope that a few of these tips will help you to get the quality of sleep you need and deserve, maybe without having to resort to alcohol or sleeping tablets, neither of which are a long term solution. To avoid overloading you with one very long post, I’ll break these methods up into a 3-Step approach which I’ll post today, tomorrow, and then the third on monday.

Step 1: Nutrition

Avoid eating a lot of sugary or starchy carbohydrates (crips, cereals, sweets, sugar, bread etc.) late at night. These will cause your blood sugar levels to rise quickly, with the inevitable drop in blood sugar later in the night that could interrupt your sleep and leave you awake, hungry and cranky. Minimise your caffeine intake (coffee, tea, coke, energy drinks) or simply cut them out. At least limit these to before 3pm. And for the clincher, there are actually certain foods that may contain the natural cure for your sleepless nights. You ideally want a mix of protein and good fats in this last meal, as you want a slow and steady release of energy throughout the night to avoid blood sugar crashes and encourage muscle growth and repair. To sleep at 10pm, try an evening meal at 7pm with;

A grilled turkey breast (containing sleep-boosting tryptophan);

A few cherries (containing melatonin, the sleep hormone);

A handful of raw almonds and raw spinach (containing magnesium, a natural relaxant)

Some of these chemical compounds and minerals are being researched and sold as sleep-enhancing drugs in their own right. I’d prefer to have a bash off using natural (and cheap) methods before forking out your hard-earned dough for a new drug that may or may not work on it’s own. An hour or two after this meal you will struggle to keep your eyes open. I find this combination to work a treat for me and my clients. I would also recommend trying a supplement called ZMA, containing zinc and magnesium, and a 5 g teaspoon of L-glutamine(an amino acid used to prevent overtraining and promote digestive and immune health) mixed in a little water. I find on a ZMA+glutamine combination that 8 hours of sleep feels like 12 hours of deep, restful sleep. This may be due to the relaxing effects of magnesium or the hormone-balancing effects of ZMA. Try this meal out for the next few evenings and see how it affects your sleep quality. Stay tuned for the next post on psychological methods. Happy snoozing!

THE ULTIMATE PROS AND CONS OF THE WARMUP

PROS

The perfect warmup prepares both the body and mind for the workout to come. You arrive at the gym, fire up your AC/DC on the ipod, and start your dynamic warmup;

1. Your heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle temperature begin to rise, you feel a light sweat and start sucking in air.

2. Your mind-body connection is strengthened as you practice fresh, crisp movement patterns.

3. Your mind becomes clear, focused and ready for the hard work to come.

4. Your brain sends messages down along your spine and nerves through the neuromuscular junction and tells the right muscles to start firing in the right sequence. The main muscle groups and stabilisers are primed and ready for high forces and heavy lifting.

5. Your joints become well lubricated and your ankles, thoracic spine and hips become more mobile.

CONS

1. I train myself and my clients for REAL WORLD STRENGTH AND FITNESS. Improved sporting performance and a better physique should merely be a bonus, the side-effects of hard, functional training and solid, healthy nutrition. Do you ever get a chance to warm-up in real life? Does a lioness stop to stretch her hamstrings before chasing down a gazelle?

2. God forbid the worst should happen; your toddler takes off downhill on his tricycle towards a busy crossroads. You stumble downstairs for a glass of water in the middle of the night and meet a startled burglar helping himself to your HD TV. Your life and the lives of your family are on the line. Do you think you’ll get the chance to stop and do a few jumping jacks first?

3. The longer the bout of exercise lasts, and the lower the muscular forces and flexibility demand involved, the less important the warmup, in my opinion.

A 100m sprint requires huge forces to be produced in take off and absorbed in landing. A huge range of motion is involved and the mind must be primed for a short, 10 seconds of explosive effort.

An ironman triathlon, on the other hand, can have a cut-off time of 17 hours.

How important can a ten-minute warmup be for this event. In my opinion, for a long-distance event, it is more important to make sure that the right work has been put in before race day, that the athlete has muscular balance, a strong core, strong tendons, healthy joints, efficient movement patterns etc. Once this groundwork has been done, a very brief active warmup and slow starting pace should be more than enough to get you on your way.

4. You were custom-made to perform in extreme situations.

Your fight or flight reflex is designed to make you immediately ready to fight off a predator or run for your life. Your body is supplied with a large adrenaline dump, your heart rate and blood pressure spike, blood is shunted towards the main muscle groups and away from non-essential processes like digestion. If you take 15 minutes to perform a set routine warm-up at a nice easy pace every single time you train, you are not training for life.

SO WHAT NOW?

I’m not suggesting you ditch the warmup altogether. I don’t want 50 people reading this article and promptly nutting themselves the next time they go for a max deadlift after walking in off the street.

For safety, those new to training should always carry out a full and thorough warmup before any strenuous exercise. Sport-specific warm-ups before your chosen sport are an absolute must. When doing your heavy lifting, warm up progressively to avoid doing serious damage.

My point is that all too often, I see people squandering their precious time by just half-heartedly going through the motions with their warmup without any clearly defined goals. A warmup should be focused, tailored to your individual needs, and brief enough not to detract from the main training session.

What I am suggesting is that you take the fluff out of your warmup and minimise it to get the most bang for your buck. Fifteen minutes jogging on a treadmill or sitting on a bike is not an efficient or effective warmup in my book. Everything in your warmup should be there for a reason, eg:

• Fundamental movement skills for sport (jumping, landing, sprinting etc.)
• Client-specific mobility drills to address each clients’ restrictions
• Myofascial release on areas of muscle adhesion, e.g. iliotibial band
• Learning new movement patterns, e.g. the turkish getup/single leg RDL

An athlete that is well trained and injury-proofed should be capable of performing at or near their bests at random. They should be capable of lifting awkward, heavy objects and covering any type of terrain in real life. All of my clients report that training with me has made them better equipped to handle the physical and mental stresses of daily life, be it the paramedic carrying a patient down three flights of stairs on a stretcher, or a retired accountant capable of heavy gardening work and hill-walking every weekend with his teenage son.

Know your limits and have an idea of what you’d be able to do off the bat with no prior warning. I know I’d be able to knock out about 80% of my max on most lifts without a warmup during a normal active working day. I know I could run a surprise 30 metre one or two seconds slower than my best.

Develop the ability to move explosively and act on instinct in the real world.

A karate instructor friend once told me, “A black belt is like car insurance. You never want to use it, but you have to have it.” Take that approach when developing your real world strength and fitness. Train to develop the confidence that if and when you ever need it, it’s there.

If you would like to start training but don’t know where to start, come and meet with me for a free consultation by emailing vaughan.barry@gmail.com, or calling me on 0863126918. I have a new special offer on personal training starting soon, stay tuned to the facebook page for details, get out and get active and make the most of the beautiful weather!

Regards,

Barry Vaughan BSc CSCS