Forget carb loading, try sleep loading

Here is a fun article from the New York Times that talks about the benefits of sleep on athletic performance. While the study is small, I still think the evidence is compelling based upon everything we know about training and recovery.

• The brain processes the information from the day overnight while we sleep — which is why things oftentimes look different in the morning.
• Strength gains come from the recovery time BETWEEN training sets, not the actual training time. Since sleep is a completely sedentary activity, there is more true recovery time.
• Lack of sleep leads to lack of mental acuity. There is no way that physical performance can be at it’s best when the brain isn’t functioning well.

You can find more details about the sleep study at Science Daily as well.