You grow when you rest. You grow when you sleep at night, and you grow when you take naps during the day (if this is feasible for you). Proper rest via healthy sleep patterns is often a missing component in an otherwise excellent approach to muscle-building. Sleep often becomes a problem for people who are training hard, dieting hard and doing things that ramp up their metabolism to get in the best shape possible. It’s due to the rate at which their body is running and working to process everything it has been fed or attacked by (the training stimulus).
Despite your current goals and efforts to support those goals, one thing should never take precedence over another, and all facets of this lifestyle must be in synch to fully achieve success; and one of the most important of those is your sleep.
Sleep is critical. Although a little sleep is better than none at all, the longer you go without adequate sleep, the slower your gains will be. And soon you’ll see no gains at all.
Here are a few ideas to help you maximize your sleep quality and quantity to further enhance the muscle-building process.
Train earlier . . .
It is tough to get to sleep at a decent time when you train later in the day or into the night. Let’s say you have to get up a six in the morning to get your day started, and you finished up your workout the night before around ten o’clock. By the time you get home, get cleaned up, eat and unwind, you’re probably getting close to twelve which only leaves you with six hours of sleep if you can get to sleep right away. That’s not a lot of time to rest, and most likely you won’t even get into the muscle-building or recovery phase of sleep known as REM sleep for a good couple hours after falling asleep. Your body will still be in overdrive from the workout only a few short hours before going to bed.
You’ll be much better off training as early as you can to allow your body to return to homeostasis or as close as possible so that when it is time to sleep, you’re not all amped-up. You’ll get to sleep quicker and deeper.
Eat slow digesting, low-calorie foods . . .
Right before going to bed, the worst thing you could do for yourself is jam a bunch of calorie-rich food into your body and then expect getting to sleep is going to be easy. Sure you might go into a carb coma and fall asleep right away, but that sleep will be restless at best. Your body will be doing its best to 
digest all of that food, your metabolism will take a huge spike, energy levels will rise, and you’ll find yourself stirring more than sleeping. Instead, choose foods that are low-cal and slow digesting such as the new Raptor-HP. Not only will this product not interfere with your sleep, but it will also provide a nice amino acid trickling effect delivering all that you need to support the growth you’re after during rest.
Stay cool . . .
A cool bedroom will certainly help you sleep deeply. Opening up the windows to allow a nice breeze into your bedroom, cranking up the air conditioner or setting up a fan will all help cool down your body as you rest. When you are too warm, your sleep becomes fragmented and disturbed. You want to be able to sleep uninterrupted for the duration of the night to maximize hormonal output and support recovery.
Another thing you can do is drink a little of ice water just before going to bed. This will also help lower your core temperature and help you settle into a deep sleep faster.
Supplement with GABA . . .
The final piece of the puzzle when trying to maximize your growth potential during sleep is supplementing with GABA. This amino acid has been shown to promote restful sleep, increase naturally occurring growth hormone levels, enhance recovery, reduce body fat and promote increases in lean muscle mass. Take a serving about a half hour before going to bed each night to really benefit from this fantastic supplement.
After reading this article, you should never look at sleep as just ‘sleep’ anymore. Look at it as a time to grow and prosper by way of your daily efforts to maximize muscle. Missing out on sleep is missing out on muscle, and no one wants that to happen!
