For me, 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep a night is a good guideline. Not every single night has to go flawlessly, as long as the weekly average adds up.
Without enough hours of sleep, intense training after 50 is often more breakdown than the buildup you are working so hard for.
What a Structural Sleep Deficit Costs You in Concrete Terms
If your night’s rest consistently falls short, you notice it in your physical performance and your fat burning:
- Faster fat storage: your insulin sensitivity can decrease, so your body handles carbohydrates less well and stores them more quickly as body fat instead of using them as muscle fuel.
- Disrupted hormone levels: you see lower natural testosterone production in men and a less stable balance of estrogen and progesterone in women.
- Less growth hormone: in the first half of the night, during deep sleep, the largest release of growth hormone normally takes place. After a short night, muscle recovery goes less well.
- Hormonal hunger: production of the hunger hormone ghrelin rises, while the satiety hormone leptin falls. The result: far more craving for fast sugars and high-calorie snacks.
You Break Down in the Gym, You Build Up in Your Sleep
I learned that lesson the hard way myself, by simply pushing on with too little rest.
Strength training and good nutrition provide the necessary stimulus and the right building blocks, but a large part of the actual rebuilding happens while you sleep. Without that recovery time, the results do not come, however hard you train.
The full approach is in The Power of 50+
This is my experience, not medical advice. More background is in “The Power of 50+.”