Photography Shutterstock | 1. Medical Hypotheses
Proper sleep is often overlooked as a critical factor when it comes to maximising muscle gains, but getting suf cient rest is essential for both performance and recovery. During sleep, blood glucose gets stored in the muscle as muscle glycogen. Without enough sleep, you will fail to get maximum replenishment of muscle glycogen while reducing levels of human growth hormone. Various studies have shown how sleep deprivation affects muscle gains and recovery – in one, subjects who slept only 5.5 hours had 60 per cent less muscle mass, while those who managed 8.5 hours had 40 per cent more.1 A more recent study, published in Life Sciences, showed that sleep deprivation reduced protein synthesis, decreasing the ability to repair muscle damage after high-intensity exercise.