Modern life is full of compromise. One of the things we tend to give up first is sleep. Many of us do not sleep enough. You'd be surprised at how much sleep an athlete needs and how much lack of sleep might effect performance.
An average person should sleep between 6 and 10 hours every day
Sleep is important for getting what you want from your body. During sleep a hormone called "growth hormone" is released from the brain. This hormone has a positive effect on muscles, making them grow. Without sleep, or with too little sleep, you loose some of the effects of growth hormone on muscle.
Sleeping also gives our body a chance to repair damages caused by physical activity. These small injuries are called overuse injury and they may damage your performance and cause you to miss training sessions and not achieve your goals. It is well known that lack of sleep, even small, might exacerbate and potentiate these damages, without giving the body a chance to fix them. Some people who get the right amount of sleep, but do so in chunks (they don't sleep continuously, but with breaks) also tend to be injured more.
Noise and constant movement (such as vibration or travel) are tiring
Sporting events that require precision or concentration are hampered by small amounts of sleep deprivation. For example, sleeping 4 - 5 hours a day for 5 days which may not sound that bad was proven to lower the performance of pilots. Sports physiologists are very concerned in assessing just how tired athletes are. Various different measures have been developed in order to do just that (for example, performance in specific tests such as running 5K or jumping from a static position). Lately it was found that even simple psychological questionnaires (that take just 2 - 3 minutes to fill) are just as good in assessing how tired an triathlete is (Journal of science and medicine in sport).
You can not practice winning despite lack of sleep
A change in your wake - sleep cycle can cause you to be tired. This is why when you travel to a competition, you should get there a few days before time. Also, you should train at the same hours a race is planned to take place.
Unfortunately you can not accumulate sleep. On the other hand sleep deficit does accumulate and should be dealt with
A power nap is something that marrits a few words. Getting between 10 and 40 minutes of sleep during the day (not more!) can really charge you up. Sleeping more than that might actually cause you to be more tired.
If you are tired, some methods to wake up include stretching and power drills. Caffeine does add energy but the effect is temporary and after it wanes you get back to being tired. If you do use caffeine, take it before you are tired (as a prophylactic measure).
So, the dosc4tri recommend that you sleep tight and give a good fight!
