IN TODAY’S society sleep is one of those most ignored, taken for granted routine, its either because people are workaholics or they are hooked with their gadgets that prevents them from hitting the bed early, factors that are true and significant most specially of todays’ teens or at least majority of them are teens some are even younger, many are trapped some say hypnotized by gadgets as young as eight years old which can keep them awake until the next day altering the normal body clock of awake during the day and sleep during the night.
As a coach and a trainer, it is understood in laymen that lack of sleep is lack of rest thus depriving your body of recovery. As an athlete that needs to train to maintain a certain level of competitiveness recovery from yesterday’s training, it is very essential as it will prepare you to come back the next day to absorb more. If you lack sleep, you skipped proper recovery thus making your maintaining the state of being tired and unprepared to take some more on another training day.
Some young athletes ignore this simple fact simply because they got away several times with lack of sleep and still could train the next day this is explained simply by the fact that they are still young and their immune system is still strong and working fine but it will just be a matter of time that they will “reap what they sow” with the inevitable occurrence of irregularities in their body that would serve as a wake-up call for them some will be fortunate to survive it and some would suffer the painful consequence.
According to an article in National Sleep Foundation titled “Sleep Athletic performance and Recovery,” many of the world’s greatest athletes eat, sleep, breathe, and live for their sport. But did you know that in addition to physical conditioning and conscious eating, sleep plays a major role in athletic performance and competitive results? The quality and amount of sleep athletes get is often the key to winning.
Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep in particular provides energy to both the brain and body. If sleep is cut short, the body doesn’t have time to repair memory, consolidate memory, and release hormones.
For this author, lack of sleep for athletes is like training improperly, it is just shouts disaster, so whether the gadgets or social media play a big role or no,t athletes should reflect on what they want to achieve and the things they must do and observe in order to attain it.