by Peyton Mayberry, LAT, ATC

Sleep, you either love it or hate it, but you can’t live without it! As industrial athletes, you put your body through demanding work – lifting, reaching, and moving with purpose. Sleep is your body’s way to repair and recover from the rigors of the day. It’s one of the strongest indicators on how your next day could go. When we don’t get enough sleep there are negative consequences, both long term and short term. Time to learn about how we can allow our bodies to [D] Debrief & Recuperate more efficiently!

What’s In It For Me?

According to Healthline, sleep can help you maintain weight loss, increase concentration, increase athletic performance and productivity, strengthen your heart, and positively affect emotional and social interactions. When we skip out on sleep, we miss out on a lot of developmental benefits which affect our overall performance in day-to-day items.

Sleep Cycles

When we sleep, we go through cycles which include stages of different depths of sleep. Each stage has its own benefits for long term and short term health. A good night’s sleep should consist of 4-5 sleep cycles. A sleep cycle typically lasts about 1 hour and 45 minutes, so if you are only sleeping 4-5 hours a night, you miss out on two whole cycles of benefits! You wouldn’t skip half your reps and call it a workout. So don’t skip half your sleep cycles and expect full recovery.

Let’s Break It Down

Stage 1: Light Sleep
This stage lasts about 1-5 minutes. Not much happens in this stage since our body is just starting to get settled into full on rest.

Stage 2: Deep Sleep
This stage lasts about 25 minutes. When we fall into deep sleep our heart rate and body temperature drop which allows our heart to take a break from all the work it has been doing throughout the day. Another benefit of this stage is that procedural and declarative memory are further developed.

Examples of procedural memory are things like driving, writing, typing, walking, or riding your bike. Declarative memory includes things we learn on a daily basis spanning all the way to memories from childhood that you wish to recall. When we do not get enough sleep, our capacity for memory is greatly affected.

Stage 3: Deeper Sleep
This state lasts about the same amount as stage two. When awoken from this stage you may feel mental fogginess, which may cause a decrease in mental performance. That’s one of the reasons why it is important to get over 7 hours of sleep, so when we do wake up, we don’t feel too disoriented to do anything! Benefits of this stage include: repair and regrowth of tissue, bone and muscle building, and strengthening of the immune system. This is the rebuild phase-where your body patches up the wear and tear from the day’s workload. Skip it, and you’re showing up to work sore, sluggish, and one step closer to injury.

Stage 4: Deepest Sleep
The last stage of the cycle also lasts about 25 minutes. The main benefit of this stage is an increase in brain metabolism. How does that benefit you? Think of this stage as a mental tune-up. Your brain clears clutter, strengthens memory, and sharpens focus so tomorrow’s safety checks and precision tasks feel smoother and sharper.

Every lift, reach, and rep depends on how well you let your body recover. Sleep is when your muscles rebuild, your mind resets, and your focus sharpens. Skip it, and your next shift gets heavier than it needs to be. Rest is recovery. Recovery is readiness. That’s how you stay Work Right strong.

Peyton Mayberry, LAT, ATC || Peyton is a certified Athletic Trainer in Decatur, IL. She graduated from Millikin University before transplanting to Tanzania for two months. Upon her return to the States, she began her first full time athletic training job with Work Right. In her free time she enjoys exercising, volunteering, reading, and traveling with her husband, Nic!

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Be sure to check out our other blogs for further injury prevention education and tips for the industrial athlete from Work Right NW!