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We’re not saying you should default to hitting snooze and skipping your morning run. But there is compelling new evidence that if you’re a runner, you really do need to figure out how to regularly get good sleep.
A new study in Applied Sciences analyzed the sleep and injury patterns of 425 recreational runners and saw that those who got poor sleep were much more likely to report being injured than those who got better sleep. In fact, the worst sleepers had a 68 percent chance of being injured over a year-long period.
The study didn’t come up with specific metrics to quantify exactly what “poor sleep” means; it divided people into groups according to how well they slept. But here’s the gist: People with poor sleep got fewer hours of shuteye a night; had lower sleep quality (they were asked to rate their quality of sleep on a 5-point scale from very bad to very good); and/or had more sleep problems (trouble falling asleep, waking up during the night, and waking up feeling tired and not well-rested). You probably know if you’re one of them.
How does sleep affect running?
Olympian Ivan Puskovitch put it well when he told Men’s Health that “if [sleep] wasn’t something our bodies did naturally, it would be the most banned substance on the planet.” Sleep—and lack of it—affects running in a pretty dramatic number of ways when you’re on the road and also when you’re not.
“Chronic sleep deprivation doesn’t just make runners tired; it undermines recovery, coordination, and judgment. Over time, this creates a perfect storm for higher injury risk,” explains lead study author Jan de Jonge, who’s both at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands and also at the University of South Australia.
More specifically, poor sleep increases your reaction time and throws your coordination off, which messes with your timing and form. It also shortens your time to exhaustion, explains Heather Milton, a clinical exercise specialist at the sports performance Center at NYU Langone Health.
Beyond that, a huge issue with skimping on sleep is what it does to recovery. “When we have lower levels of sleep,” Milton explains, “it limits the ability of anabolic hormones such as growth hormone and testosterone to repair affected tissues.” At the same time, inflammatory markers in your body stay elevated. “That means that for the next run on low sleep, we’re in a more inflamed state, can produce less force, and may even degrade our tissues even further, which can contribute to injury.”
Does this whole sleep thing matter that much if you’re not a pro?
De Jonge says it’s still an open question whether non-pro runners require as much sleep as the pros do. “The answer is likely yes, and in some cases they may need even more,” he adds, pointing to everything else that’s costing physical and mental energy (the endless parade of deadlines, kid stuff, grocery shopping, car repairs, doctor appointments, social obligations).
No need to be extreme; the upper end of the seven to nine recommended hours of sleep could be beneficial, he says, and adds that “we did not find evidence that more/better sleep is related to less injury risk. It’s the other way around: Poor sleep is related to higher injury risk.”
If your life is packed, are you doomed to injury?
Sleep is essential, but you can also influence your injury risk by balancing running volume, intensity, and recovery, Milton points out. (Of course, you should be doing this, anyway.)
And if the sleep-in-versus-work-out dilemma is keeping you up at night, Milton recommends keeping a log. “Track how fatigued and ready for the run you feel on a scale of 1 to 10 [10 is super ready, 1 is not at all], and compare that to how much sleep you got. Note patterns,” she says.
The point isn’t to stress about sleep; it’s to do what you can to make it happen. De Jonge puts it this way: “The findings suggest that sleep should be treated as a performance priority, and not as an afterthought.”
Marty Munson, currently the health director of Men’s Health, has been a health editor at properties including Marie Claire, Prevention, Shape and RealAge. She’s also certified as a swim and triathlon coach.