One of the most overlooked aspects of bodybuilding is the importance of sleep. Everybody has to sleep in order to rest the body and prepare the brain for the next waking day. As you sleep, you body also makes the necessary repairs it needs and tries to refresh your body from aches and pains. It is this phase which is most important for fitness training as this is when all the hard work really starts.
After you finish your workout, you will feel tired due to the strain of the exercises and the lack of usable tissue still left in your body. (We break down body tissue with exercise, see How Do muscles grow?). As soon as you stop exercising, you body tries to recover your muscles so you can continue your activities - though this is slow because you are awake at the time. When you sleep, your body has more time to concentrate on rebuilding your muscle tissue and this process continues until you next perform continuous physical activity. This is why you should not over-use your muscles between workouts as this will slow down or reverse the muscle re-building process.
For this reason you must take as much sleep as you can. This means you will not only be fresh for the next day but you will also have subjected you body to much needed repair time. Teenagers should aim for 9 or 10 hours of sleep per night, and adults 8 - 9 hours. No less than 7 hours sleep should be taken by anyone serious about weight training or you will need to take more days off between workouts. It may also be an idea to take a 15 minute nap during the day, especially in summer when your body needs more energy due to sweating etc.
