The importance of a good night’s sleep is hard to overstate, for both non-athletes and athletes alike. Adequate sleep helps improve our cognition, alertness, mood and energy levels. Importantly, as we sleep, our bodies release substances like human growth hormone that are critical for recovery from hard workouts and races.

What does a “good night of sleep” look like? For adults aged 18 - 60, the CDC and American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society recommend 7 or more hours per night. Most endurance athletes “need ∼8 hours of sleep per night to feel rested,” although more than two thirds of athletes “do not obtain the sleep they need on a regular basis.”

When one of my athletes has the inevitable (but hopefully rare) short night of sleep, I recommend that they do not train that following day. Inadequate sleep causes a reduction in muscular strength and endurance, increases the risk of injury, and slows the rate at which our bodies adapt to and recover from hard training. I would rather have an athlete skip a workout, take a rest day, and get back higher-quality training the next day than to push themselves on inadequate sleep to complete their workout at a lower quality.

Travel, stress, work deadlines, sick kids, pre-race nerves - there are lots of reasons you might get lousy sleep. If you know in advance that you will get 6 hours of sleep or less on a given day, here are a few ways to minimize the negative impacts to your training:

Focus on factors you can control, like your nutrition, hydration, attitude and sleep hygiene.
Prioritize working out in the morning, and ideally, closer to when you wake up rather than later in the day.
Reduce the intensity and duration of your workout.

If you are regularly getting less than six hours of quality sleep per night, I humbly suggest that you take a look where training and racing land on your list of responsibilities and goals. The high-quality training and recovery needed to make gains simply can’t be achieved with chronic sleep deprivation.

Explore more:

Read: 8 Powerful Ways to Help Your Athletes Sleep Better

Listen: The Power of Sleep for Entrepreneurs and Elite Athletes

Watch: 6 tips for better sleep | Sleeping with Science, a TED series

Sargent, C., Lastella, M., Halson, S. L., & Roach, G. D. (2021). How Much Sleep Does an Elite Athlete Need?. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 16(12), 1746-1757. Retrieved Aug 14, 2023, from https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2020-0896

Sleep: You Need More (and What To Do When You Don’t Get It