8 sleeping habits killing your gains.

 What's up, guys? Pritam is here. I do think I could roll out of bed and do these article, but today we're going to actually talk about bed, and the positions you are in bed, and what you're doing underneath the sheets. Get your mind out of the gutter. I'm actually talking about what you're doing with your own body underneath those sheets that is absolutely wrecking your body andyour workouts.


What you do here is absolutely going to have an impact on what you can even do in here. Now let's start right off the bat with before you even get into bed. When you get in bed, guys, there's two things that you want to do.

Number one: You want to stretch your bodyout. See, we always talk about the benefits ofstatic stretching, but done at the right time. We know that static stretching done right before your workout can actually reduce your strength and your output. We also know that doing it right before your workout can change the way that your body moves during your workout. So we don’t want to do that. But we don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to make sure that we're staying loose, and we do that before we go to bed. Why?

Because when we go to bed, that's when our tissues start to heal themselves overnight, and they start to shorten overnight. So you want to make sure that right before bed, your last opportunity to keep them as long as they're possibly going to be. The next thing you're going to want to dois adjust the end of the bed.
What am I talking about? I'm talking about the tightness of your sheets. This is something that we don’t even realizewe do. We keep the end of our bed tight so when weput our feet in our ankles automatically go down. Now we're spending the next eight, nine, tenhours with our ankles down in this plantar flexed position, which is going to lead totight calves.
No doubt. You're spending that much time every, singleday. Well, what happens when you come back intothe gym and you try to squat? If you can't get adequate calf flexibility here, you're not going to get down low enough – at least not without compensations in your knees and hips. So one of the biggest things you can do istry to keep your calves loose. That's by avoiding one of the biggest mistakeswe make every, single night by having those end of the bed sheets too tight. Next is the type of pillow you're using. Here, I want to caution you on going for the one that feels the fluffiest, or the most comfortable, because what you're doing is,you're artificially creating so much flexion in the back of your neck here, that you'releading to two of the biggest problems we see in the gym. The first is called upper-cross syndrome,which is when the shoulders start to round, our posture starts to adapt this way, andit makes it really hard for us to press, or do anything up, overhead. At least with good posture. What's happening is, a big contributor to that is a tight front of the neck. That happens by using a pillow too tight,that pushes our head forward, as you can see here. Beyond that we know that we can lead ourselves to cervical disc issues by having this constantly flexed position here, which is something you'dnever want to deal with. Opt for a flatter pillow that puts your head here at a much better alignment, your neck is in a much more neutral position, and you can even see the difference in the neck muscles. They actually have a chance here to relaxin this position. Kind of building on that same concept, and how we screw up our shoulders when we sleep at night, is this next one. This is really popular.

How many of you out there like to sleep withone hand up, under your head? If you do you're causing some problems here because internal shoulder rotation is probably the second most rampant thing going on inour bodies. It's really, really hard to reverse. Why? Because we spend so much time, again, strengthening the internal rotators in the gym, not strengthening the external rotators – which is a big problem– but more importantly, spending eight, nine, ten hours at night like this, with ourhand under our head like this.

Now, if you look closely, look at what's going on here. My shoulder is in an internally rotated position because I have my arm, and forearm resting on top of the pillow, which is now angles upward, and it's up, under my head. Now if we insist on sleeping this way youcan actually do this, but in a different way. You want to put your arm under the pillow. You can see the dramatic difference. The internal rotation is now gone. You're getting into a flattened position here,which is a better position for your shoulder. You're not going to adaptably shorten overnight by doing this. Again, it still gives you the opportunity if the habit of yours is to stay this way, you're going to be able to do that, just ina better way for your shoulders. This next one is for you stomach sleepers. Once again, here you're going to jack up your shoulders. But you're doing an even better job because you're hitting them both at the same time.

If you lay on your stomach, and you have your hands under your head here, once again, you're in this internally rotated position of your shoulders – which we know is not going to be good, especially for that prolonged periodof time – but beyond that, look what's happening down the spine a little bit more, in the lowback. You're causing a lot of tightness and theperaspinal is right in your low back. And beyond that too, you're jamming your bodyand your spine into extension for a long period of time, which is going to cause a lot of problems. Especially if you have stenosis, or any other condition – which is a narrowing of the spine. These are things you can avoid. You can keep this arm position if you'd like to have them up, behind your head. But once again, you're going to want to flip over and put them up, behind your head this way.

We've gone from the internally rotated position,to an externally rotated position, just by making that one change. If you fetal position sleepers – which I have to admit, that's me – look what you're doing to your body. You're creating a situation where your hip flexors are getting so tight, by literally being hugged up close to your body, on topof that fact that you probably sat around a lot during the day at your desk, too. You are creating, probably, the worst of all scenarios here. Adaptably shortened hip flexors can createa whole mess of problems.

Most notably, anterior pelvic tilt, whichleads to a whole mess of problems in the gym. I actually did a whole article on anterior pelvic tilt that you're going to want to check out as well. The fact is guys, you don’t have to abandon side sleeping. Here's the good news: if you want to sleep this way you can sleep on your side, you just can't  pull your knees up into your chest. You want to keep those hip flexors elongated,but you also want to make sure that you're not causing a stress on the outer hip, by letting the top hip sink down.

So it's easy to fix. You just throw a pillow between your two knees,and now you can see that everything is in alignment. Your hip is right there in alignment with your pelvis, you no longer have that shortening and tightness in your hip flexors, and again,even up to the top of the body here, you can see that we're still carrying through with that arm under the pillow to make sure that the shoulders are in a good position. As an alternative you could look like a corpse too, if you want. You can lay right, flat on your back, because we know that here you're going to have none of the issues.

Of course, remember to loosen up the sheets at the end of the bed so you're not getting that pull down effect on the ankles, and you want to make sure those hip flexors are nice, and elongated, and your arms are in whatever position so as not to cause any of these internal rotation positions of your shoulder. If you can sleep this way, then this is the best way to always sleep. But if you can't, you've got that option of laying on your side. Just make sure you make that one modification with the pillow. This next one actually starts before you goto bed, but really the important part is what you do as soon as you wake up.

That is: what are you doing about your hydration?
Now we know a hydrated muscle is going tohave a better opportunity to heal, and to recover, and we want to make sure we're getting hydrated before we go to bed. But how soon? If you're the type that drinks a full glass of water right before you go to bed, you've pretty much just guaranteed yourself one,or two trips to the bathroom. More importantly, one, or two times that you're waking up, and disrupting your sleep. You don’t want to do that. So optimally, if you can get your last glass of water about an hour, or so before you go to bed so you can have one, last time to gobefore you hit your head on the pillow; that's ideal. But realize, if you're sleeping for eight,nine, or ten hours you're going to be pretty damn dehydrated. So as soon as you wake up do what I do. I literally go and have a glass – it's about 16oz, somewhere between 12oz and 16oz – and I drink two glasses. I chug them down every, single morning.

That's the first thing I do. I want to make sure I do this to jump start my hydration because it's too damned easy to jump in the shower, do something else,get distracted, and start behind the eight ball. You want to make sure that your hydrationis on point, right from the get go. Last, but not least, the most impactful adviceI could probably give you is this: get some damn sleep! If you want to perform well in the gym then you've got to get some sleep. Not just because you're going to feel more rested, but you've constantly got his battle between cortisol and testosterone going onevery, single day. If testosterone wins you're going to be ina better position than you are right now. If cortisol wins – which it likely is, especially if you're not getting enough sleep – then you're not going to like the results. Guys, cortisol will increase if you don’tget enough sleep. It's been proven. There's a direct correlation between that,and the more cortisol goes up, the more testosterone goes down. So do whatever it takes to make sure that you get enough sleep, and now, hopefully you're armed with better sleeping positions to avoid some of the adaptive shortening, and some of the mobility restrictions that can comefrom not even realizing what you're doing once you close your eyes at the end of theday. All right, guys. I'll see you soon. 

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