How Important is "Sleep Quality" to Your Program's Performance?

This week's post is from Rise Science. They're experts in sleep and readiness; they use sensors and iPhone apps that help your team improve their sleep as well as seamlessly give you readiness information before workouts start. Find a snippet from one of their posts on the basics of sleep and a link to their blog to learn more:

What is sleep? We all sleep. Most of us spend around 1/3 of our lives sleeping. And yet we have almost no memory of it, other than some snippets of dreams. When we wake up in the morning we have the sensation of sleepiness, and the feeling that we weren't awake for the past several hours, but this doesn't tell us anything about sleep. So, what exactly is sleep?

Dr. William Dement, one of the leading sleep researchers in the world defines sleep as having two main features:1

Our senses stop sending information to the conscious mind. We cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell while asleep. Of course, a loud enough noise or bright enough light will wake us up. So, our senses are still working and sending information to our brains, but the conscious mind is oblivious to the outside world.

Sleep can easily be reversed. No matter how deeply asleep someone is they can be woken easily. This means that being in a coma, under an anesthetic, or passed out drunk are not the same as sleep.

Read more about why we sleep and the relationship between sleep and athletic performance at http://bit.ly/risescience_whysleep