What causes sleepiness after strength training?

Most of the time, it is a normal stress response after physical exercise. Only a few cases are signs of improper training arrangements or potential physical problems.

Speaking of which, I was hit hard when I tried to deadlift 140kg PR a while ago. I also did 4 sets of descending leg presses and 3 sets of weighted lunges. After the exercise, I felt my eyelids were so heavy that I couldn’t even lift them when I was changing clothes. After I left the gym, I found a community convenience store and sat there for 20 minutes before I dared to ride an electric bike home. If the ice-American style in the convenience store hadn’t saved half my life, I probably would have taken a nap on a rest chair in front of someone else’s house.

In fact, the principle is not complicated. During strength training, the sympathetic nerves of the whole person are tense, the concentration is highly concentrated, and the secretion of hormones such as testosterone and cortisol is also full. When training stops, the parasympathetic nerves responsible for controlling rest and digestion take over, and the whole person's state switches from "fighting mode" to "repair mode" in an instant. Feeling sleepy is a natural physiological reaction. In addition, strength training consumes glycogen very hard. If you train at a moderate intensity for an hour and a half, almost one-third of the glycogen reserves in the muscles will be consumed. If the blood sugar drops, the brain cannot keep up with the energy supply, which will make you feel groggy. If you are sleepy at this level, you can usually drink a cup of sugar water and eat a banana, and you will be relieved in ten to twenty minutes, so there is no need to panic at all.

However, there have always been two completely different opinions in the fitness circle about feeling sleepy after training. The older generation of bodybuilding seniors always think that this is a signal that the training is in place, indicating that the muscles have been fully stimulated and the body actively reduces activity to save energy for repair. Being sleepy actually means that there is no paddling during this training.； But now many sports performance coaches feel that if you are so sleepy after every practice that you can't open your eyes, and you are still not energetic after three or four hours, and you don't even want to eat, then the training volume actually exceeds your current endurance, which is a training overload. On the contrary, it will affect the subsequent training status and lead to muscle loss in the long run.

A young girl I trained last year who had just graduated is a typical negative example. When she first started training, she was eager to increase her strength. She followed the high-level online program every time, and the training capacity far exceeded her capacity as a novice. She would feel sleepy after practicing. Once she fell asleep directly on the bench in the locker room after squatting, and the cleaning lady woke her up. Later, I cut her training volume by one-third, adjusted the rest between groups from 1 minute to 1 and a half minutes, and asked her to eat a piece of whole wheat bread and drink half a cup of sports drink half an hour before training. After slowly adjusting it for less than a month, she said that now her muscles are a little sore after training, and she is no longer so sleepy that she can't open her eyes.

Of course, there are a few times when you feel sleepy and you need to pay more attention to it. For example, you didn't go to bed until two or three o'clock the day before, or you went to training on an empty stomach. When you feel sleepy after training, your body is protesting that you didn't give enough "logistics supplies." Just adjust your daily routine and diet before training. If you have no problem with your daily routine, rest, and diet, and you don’t practice too much, but you still feel sleepy for a long time after every practice, then it’s best to check whether you have problems such as anemia or hypothyroidism. Don’t just ignore it.