Sleep, How important is it?

So we can't really help you workout better if you're not going to take recovery seriously. The biggest part of recovery is sleep. I know, you've spent all day at the gym listening to the workout playlist and Murph Workout Radio... and I know you think Murph Workout Radio is the best workout music on the planet... BUT... you still need recovery and sleep. Yes Murph Workout Radio will help you perform 15-30% better depending on what music station you're listening to, BUT with all of that being said... you still need to sleep.

Sleep is responsible for all your recovery... you should be sleeping well and all too often the pre-workouts and crazy supplements that you kids are on these days all have chemicals inside them that don't allow your body to fully recover. Your sleep is essential and vital in muscle development, fat loss and having your brain be able to commit things to long term memory... if you're constantly worn out and not getting enough sleep you're not going to be living life to it's fullest potential. To get better sleep try avoiding these things,

1. Sleeping with the TV on... every tv show has blinky and flashes and effects and things that may wake you up mid sleep... the main goal is go to sleep and stay asleep. If something keeps waking you up in the middle of the night then you're not getting the sleep in the proportions that you need.

2. Try not using your phones, TVs etc 30 minutes before you go to bed. The blue light waves that the LED screen emits are harmful to your sleep practices. It decreases mellotonin levels and when it starts to get dark that's when your mellotonin levels are increasing to help you go to sleep. If you can't avoid watching a TV or looking at your phone at least buy some blue light blocking glasses on amazon.

3. Try lowering the temperature to your house. Your body while it sleeps wants to stay cool. If the room is too hot, it will wake you up. Try starting the temp inside the house at 65 degrees and then play with it from there. Try to monitor the level of temp and sleep by following similar routines.

4. Try to not eat or drink anything after 8 PM. The old saying "anything after 8 turns to weight" is actually sort of correct. You're body can't metabolize things that fast and when you're sleeping you won't be burning any more calories so your body helps store those as fat stores. Try to eat a well balanced dinner at around 6PM. The best thing you can do is get a board game, eat dinner and spend family time... I know TV is tempting to do when there's a good new show on... but... there are SO many other healthier alternatives. Here's a few that I like to do with my family. Family Jam Band Night, everyone picks an instrument and you try to perform a song together... There's also playing cards. Have you ever played exploding kittens? It's an amazing card game that is super fun to play with relatives... you should check it out. Or a regular card game... or a board game, monopoly, life, shoots and ladders, something fun. There's so many fun board games out now... Oh there's one called telestrations thats super fun too. That one if you have a group of 12 people is super fun... basically you get card with an object on it... then you have to draw it... and then hand over your pad of erasable things the next person and then they have to guess what you drew, and then pass it to the next person and then they have to draw what the person previously guessed... and so on and so on for 12 rounds and at the end you get to do an after action review of what people guessed and what people drew... and it gets pretty wild after 12 rounds... it's like telephone except with pictures. Anyways that's a super long explanation of what you could do after dinner other than watch TV then go to bed when you feel tired.

5. Sleeping supplements - There are a lot of really great sleeping supplements that are out on the market. The one that I just recently used was one I found on Amazon called Night Shred. It's supposed to help you burn fat and get shredded while you sleep. I was moderately tired when I took it... and I took the larger prescribed dose of two pills just to see what would happen.. and low and behold BAM! It hit me like a ton of bricks... I was so tired SO FAST... I couldn't believe it... and then... i stayed asleep for a while.

6. Workout harder - This is always a really great option. We don't talk about this much because people get sensitive when you tell them that they need to workout harder... but it's true.. if you burn more calories, you will be sleepy... I've done two ironman races. I did Ironman Woodlands TX which is close to Houston. I have friends who live in Houston which is awesome and did a full ironman in Arizona. The Arizona one has serious issues with the concrete... after 112 miles of getting bounced around, getting a flat and serious pothole diving, that one left my body pretty wrecked... but I tracked the number of calorie expenditure on that workout and from the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run, I burned about 10,000 calories. Meanwhile I had calorie surplus' leading up to the race for the two days before... but that day I had only put in roughly 2000 - 3000 calories. So I had a calorie deficit of 7,000 calories for that day which I then later went to Outback steak house and put some of those calories back in... BUT when I got back to the hotel room afterwards... Woo Doggies, I was TIRED AF. I've had other big workout days and big workout weekends where I'm just tired but I still get the workout done and then this crazy amount of tiredness hits me on my way home. So stop whining about someone saying you're not working out hard enough and go push yourself a little bit past the comfort level.. often when your body is telling you that you can't do something, it's you breaking the chains of who you used to be so that you can rise up into who you're gonna be... That moment when everything is shutting down... I call that the pain cave... and a lot of your fitness progress is done there. It's how long can you hang out in the pain cave?

So there you have the most influential ways to get more sleep. Now put your headphones in, crank up that volume as Dr. Murph is prescribing... go lift some IRON... you need more IRON in your daily diet! More running... more cardio... Crank the workout playlist and the best workout music known to man... named Murph Workout Radio... Please note, Murph is not an actual doctor... he is a real person... but not an actual doctor... but more iron, heavier weights, more miles, more minutes in all the different heart zones, stay out of the grey zone though... but all the other zones you should be killing it in if you want to sculpt that body into perfection! Of course we are going to have to show a picture of aqua man... cold water also will help you... but if we are talking about body perfection... Jason Momoa has it going on... Like I'm not gay... but if I was Gay, i'd have a crush on Jason Momoa... and I mean that with the most amount of straight respect that I can give.