You can play any sport and be good, but the moment that you take your sleep for granted performances will inevitably begin to waver and fall short of your potential. Losing sleep is not conducive to training as a rugby player. There are close ties to sleep and your recovery as an athlete.
To fully grasp the extent of this connection between performance and sleep, notably recovery, we have taken the time to lay out the main reasons for its importance.
Some aspects of this are quite technical, but if you understand the prominence of it all, you can progress and develop in your training to reach enhanced levels as a player while also seeing why your training can suffer without sleep.
In case you didnât know, there are five clear stages of sleep, with one to four all closely tied before you reach the fifth; REM (rapid eye movement).
As we mentioned, the stages one through four are similarly tied because they are known as NREM (non-rapid eye movement sleep). While youâre going about your day, your beta brainwaves are in full control, operating to help you function with a mental state thatâs actively aware of what is going on around you.
When you head off to bed, those beta brainwaves take to the sidelines and make way for alpha brainwaves to come to the fore. Alpha brainwaves work to give you an awake mental state, but you are much more relaxed in yourself.
After about five-to-twenty minutes of your alpha brainwaveâs activity in your brain, there becomes a state of readiness that indicates to your brain that now is the time to enter stage 1 of sleep.
Defined by theta brainwaves, this initial stage can go on for anything from 10 seconds right up to 10 minutes. Itâs while youâre in Stage 1 that your breathing becomes shallower and your muscles begin to relax. Fun fact: youâll know that youâre in stage 1 of sleep if you are drifting off and feel like youâre falling â resulting in the involuntary muscle jerks and wide-eyed look around the room to make sure everything is okay!
This stage, which can last for anything from 10 to 20 minutes is the next progression of your sleep. Stage 2 is the point at which your bodyâs theta brainwaves start to become amalgamated with your sleep spindles and K-complex waves.
Sleep spindles effectively define the activation of actual sleep; this is because, at this point, youâre utterly unaware of almost all stimuli from an external perspective.
As you move out of stage 2, and into stage 3 of your sleep cycle, a blend of your brainâs theta and delta brainwaves start to function. Delta brainwaves are more prevalent at this point and lead you into stage 4.
Quite simply, this is when all of your theta brainwaves cease to operate, and youâre in the deepest of the stages of sleep.
Stage 3 and stage 4 are known together as âslow wave sleep.â When you reach slow wave sleep, all of the chemical reactions involved in sustaining the living state of the cells and the organ in your body (your metabolic activity) is at its lowest.
A growth hormone is released in these stages, allowing for effective muscle repair and full growth happens. Post-delta sleep stage, which occurs for around half an hour to 40 minutes, your brain revisits stage 3 and stage 4.
You will quite possibly have heard of REM sleep a little more than the other stages, and this is the fifth and final step of your sleep cycle.
A plethora of things in your body kick in once you reach REM sleep, including:
If you have ever dreamed, something a vast majority of you have done in the past, itâs during REM sleep that your dreaming experiences occur.
Your beta brainwaves come back into play here, which supports the idea that your brain is experiencing higher rates of activity at this point. Your sleep cycle will typically go through four and six cycles each time you bed down for the night. Each cycle lasts in the region of an hour and a half.
If you sleep for longer, your sleep cycles will naturally ramp up, the time you spend in stage 3 and stage 4 will subsequently decrease, and your REM sleep expands.
Experts widely know it in the field of sleep that interruptions in sleep such as getting lower than recommended amounts and low-quality sleep are the biggest reasons for your restorative ability of sleep to be affected.
For players to train and play at peak performance and not suffer the effects of poor sleep, recommendations from many studies, researchers and official sites such as The Sleep Advisor (Check out their official homepage here), suggest encompassing a minimum of seven to nine hours of sleep each evening.
If youâre a player who loves to stay up late until the small hours or keeps their sleep to a minimum in favor of other activities, then you should be made aware of some of the issues that can come as a result. By making sleep an essential part of your training, you can become a better rugby player!
Sleep deprivation issues include:
You can expect to endure bouts of tiredness and a lack of energy, along with low-quality concentration during your training sessions â apparently, this is not a good trait and will leave you struggling to complete sessions properly or find positives at the end of training.
As a rugby player, you can rest assured that using power naps to your advantage is a positive contributor. Naps aid in your recovery and restoration and research has shown that what we refer to as power naps; a short period of sleep during the daytime that lasts no longer than one hour can be utilized to help with the following:
So, after all that, weâve put together a bunch of practical guidelines that you can use to your gain that will help enhance your quality of sleep. Bear these pointers in mind when youâre trying to optimize your sleep, and you wonât go far wrong!
These steps are a significant portion of the sleep-based material that rugby players of all abilities can use to find those marginal gains in their performance on the training field and game day. We hope this helps you to enjoy your sport more and your quality of sleep improves as well!
Photo Credit: Gareth Davies
The materials and information provided in this presentation, document and/or any other communication (âCommunicationâ) from Ruck Science, LLC or any related entity or person (collectively âRuck Scienceâ) are strictly for informational purposes only and are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention or treatment of a health problem or as a substitute for consulting a qualified medical professional. Some of the concepts presented herein may be theoretical.
References to any non-Ruck Science entity, product, service, person or source of information in this or any other Communication should not be considered an endorsement, either direct or implied, by the host, presenter or distributor of the Communication. The host(s), presenter(s) and/or distributor(s) of this Communication are not responsible for the content of any non-Ruck Science internet pages referenced in the Communication. Ruck Science is not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment, diagnosis or any other information or services you chose to follow without consulting a qualified medical professional. Before starting any new diet and/or exercise program, always be sure to check with your qualified medical professional. For details of our affiliate program please see our Terms & Conditions. Click here for our Privacy Policy
