Today, we are proud to feature Dallas’ guest article in Performance Menu, the “journal of nutrition and athletic excellence” published each month by Greg Everett of Catalyst Athletics.  Dallas’ article is titled, “Sleep – An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid,” and explores the impact sleep has on your health and performance.

We’ll feature a teaser excerpt here, but for those of you who want the full scoop (including tips and tricks for maximizing the performance benefits of sleep), you’ll have to purchase the February 2011 issue of Performance Menu for $5.  Better yet, subscribe for the whole year for only $30.  That way you’ll never miss a single article from contributors like Greg Everett, Dan John, Scott Hagnas and… us.  Trust us, your health, performance and taste buds would all benefit from PMenu’s high caliber monthly offerings, and who doesn’t like the instant gratification of an on-line publication?

In fact, because we’re so sure you’ll LOVE PMenu’s format and content, and because we know you’re dying to read Dallas’ take on sleep and performance, we’re giving away 25 copies of his article, “Sleep – An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid,” to our readers.  You’ve gotta earn it, though!  The first 25 folks to post a fun and creative nutrition-related photo to our Facebook page will win a free copy of the article. Photos reflecting nutrition or food-related social commentary, humor and irony would make the cut, but photos of your lunch – delicious as it might be – aren’t quite creative enough.  So get to snapping, and we’ll pick the winners over on Facebook.

Thanks to Greg Everett and the Performance Menu team for putting out such a great publication each month – and thanks to our community for your continued readership and support.  (But don’t you dare stay up late reading Dallas’ article.  That’s just too much irony.)

Sleep – An Undervalued Ergogenic Aid

By Dallas Hartwig, MS, PT

We all know we need to sleep, and most of us would admit that we probably need more.  Unfortunately, that knowledge often isn’t enough to compel us to take action to improve our sleep patterns (or lack of such).  In the realm of athletics, sleep seems to be the red-headed step-child, clumsily acknowledged, generally overlooked, yet permanently part of the family.  With our consulting practice, and in the considerable time I’ve spent in various gyms over the years, I’ve noticed that performance-oriented athletes (and even aesthetic-driven gym rats) are very committed to their training.  I have not, however, observed the same degree of commitment to sleep.  And yet adequate quantity and quality of sleep confers not only significant health benefits, but also directly impacts your performance through a few different mechanisms. […]