Sleep...The Silent Superpower
- kirstenlawton5
- Jun 30
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 3
How Sleep Fuels Your Brain and Repairs your Body
Sleep is where the magic of recovery happens! While we sleep, muscle tissue repairs, inflammation decreases and energy stores are replenished. Good sleep sharpens coordination, focus and reaction times.
On the flip side, poor sleep can heighten pain and discomfort, slow the recovery time from injuries; and even increase the risk of new injuries.
A study by Johnston et al. (2020) involving 95 recreational endurance athletes found:
Those who slept fewer than 7 hours per night had a 51% higher risk of injury
Those who slept more than 7 hours saw a 37% reduction in injury risk
Note: These athletes were not elite professionals but individuals who regularly participated in endurance sports like running, triathlon, swimming, cycling, and rowing—making the findings widely relatable
There’s also a broader impact—insufficient sleep can lower immunity, impair cognition and negatively affect mental health. Research also increasingly links reduced REM sleep (rapid eye movement) to impaired brain function and a heightened risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.
What is good sleep & how do I get more of it?
Healthy adults are recommended to get 7–9 hours of sleep per night but if you struggle to get that, a short daytime nap of 20–30 minutes can help offset sleep deprivation (yes, the beloved nana-nap is legit!).
It is not all about the amount of sleep you get though...we need good quality sleep and that is made up of the right balance of the light, deep & REM stages, as well as stress levels being in the 'resting range'.
Here are some tips to boost your sleep quality:
Adopt good sleep hygiene, which means:
Keeping a regular sleep-wake routine—even on weekends
Avoiding caffeine after midday and alcohol close to bedtime
Skip screens at least an hour before bed (phones, tablets, etc.)
Make your bedroom comfortable: cool, dark and quiet
If you are training, match your sleep with your intensity. If your training volume increases, your sleep should too
Prioritise sleep if you are injured. I will always ask a client that is injured about their sleep (often met with a confused look), and will explain that getting enough good quality sleep is so important for recovery & wellness. It really can be the magic pill.
Finding what works for you
While the above guidelines are helpful, sleep habits are personal.
Here are a few things that I have found consistently disrupt my own sleep:
Caffeine after midday. I have two coffees a day - that essential one to kick start my morning and another mid-morning and always before noon.
Following a poor evening routine. The most common culprit? Evening scrolling. Like many, I spend too much time on social media, particularly in the evening. I’ve tried limiting screen time, but what truly works best is removing my phone from the room entirely.
Alcohol. I enjoy a glass of wine, but the affect on my sleep quality is tragic! I routinely track my sleep with my Garmin watch and have good quality sleep with a score of 80+ most nights. The score is calculated by monitoring my overnight stress levels, the amount of deep, light & REM sleep and restlessness. Add a glass of wine (and I really do mean one glass, we are not talking about a skinful here!) and the score plummets to 40 or less. And it is not just me...the infographic below shows the typical affect on sleep when drinking alcohol in different quantities.
Overheating in a warm bedroom. A chilly room with the windows open suits me much better. The Sleep Foundation cite between 18-20 Celsius as the ideal temperature for sleep, but I have found around 17c to be the optimum temperature for me.
Barriers to sleep & finding balance
There are many factors that can disrupt sleep—and not all of them can be solved right away. Medical issues, mental health challenges, family dynamics, work & everyday stress can all get in the way. There are times when improving sleep simply isn’t feasible in the short term. In these cases, it’s worth acknowledging that more sleep often comes with a trade-off.
For many people, the only quiet time we get is in the evening—those precious moments of ‘me time’ after responsibilities are done. Going to bed earlier can feel like giving up something meaningful. That extra Netflix episode before bed? Sometimes, it feels more restorative than an extra hour of sleep. So what can we do?
Ultimately, it comes down to personal priorities. If recovery is essential, whether that be from training, injury or surgery, sleep might need to take precedence over downtime and instead of focusing solely on the quantity of sleep, we might prioritise improving our sleep quality using some of the tips given and provided below.
Sleep well!
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