Sunday Story…Fitness Challenge 5

Sleep. Snooze. Nap. Shuteye. Sawing logs. Call it what you will but the most overlooked part of your fitness is sleep. It doesn’t show up on the pyramid (unless I “sharpie” it in) but it should and we don’t spend as much time on it as the rest of this stuff…food and workouts.

As a matter of fact, we usually assume sleep is something that just happens. I mean we’ve been doing it our whole lives; we should be pretty good at it by now. But we aren’t being intentional with our sleep. We haven’t analyzed it the way we analyze our workouts or our food. But since you spend about one-third of your life sleeping (as opposed to about an hour a day working out) maybe you should take a deeper dive into your sleep habits.

Here are some basic tips:

Go to bed and get up at the same time every day.
Stop your screen time at least an hour before getting into bed.
Sleep in a completely darkened room.
Keep the room cool.
When you go to bed you go to bed. You don’t watch TV, work, talk on the phone or play games. You sleep.
No caffeine after 2pm.
Use a sleep app like “sleep cycle” to start tracking both your time and quality of sleep. You will be surprised by what affects your sleep.
Read “Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar and Survival” by T.S.Wiley

If you want to be more fit, sleep more!

John Mariotti
www.crossfitodyssey.com
www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com
775-338-2412