We’re currently just a little over a week and a half into the April Sleep Challenge and hopefully those of you participating are tweaking your habits to improve your slumber. Remember, weekly sleep logs are due each Thursday no later than 8pm. The following people said they were going to join in, but I never received a sleep log:

1. Randy
2. Kyle
3. Celina
4. Bryant
5. Scott
6. Holley

No harm if you’ve decided not to play along, but if you’re interested in keeping it official, make sure you send me Week 1 data ASAP and keep them coming by each week’s deadline. For those that chose not to participate, perhaps you wonder if this is really all that important. There was an interesting infographic I recall seeing last year that spoke to the sleep habits of several pro athletes along with some statistics culled from various studies. Here’s a brief excerpt (click to enlarge):

• Maximum bench press dropped by 20 lbs after 4 days of restricted sleep
• Chronic sleep loss can lead to a 30-40% reduction in glucose metabolism (see my post on shift workers)
• Sleep loss leads to an 11% reduction in time to exhaustion

I encourage you to check out the full infographic for some more reasons to improve your sleep. Looking at the portion above, you can see that it says the average person gets only 6hrs, 44min of sleep per night. Even with some of the power sleepers we have in the gym, my small sampling shows that our gym average is quite close to that mark, at a mere 6hrs, 50min. If you’re getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night, what’s the reason? Is it something you can easily fix, like watching too much reality TV, video games or time spent on Facebook? When you ponder your personal goals, consider whether you are getting in your own way. If your aim is to improve your results on the whiteboard, set more PRs or improve your body composition, make sure you take steps to get the rest you need.

“If your own reality is so pathetic that you have to live in someone else’s reality, it’s time to assess your life and determine if it’s really worth living anymore” – Jim Wendler

Happy birthdays to Kathy and Vik today!  (Vik seems to be camera shy.  We’ll get a photo of you for next year!)

WOD 04.23.12

Press 3×5 or Wendler
Back Squat 3×5
Cash Out with Weighted Pull Ups 1-1-1