4 need to know tips to maximize your nap
Being a Fit Girl is tiring work. Between working out, preparing tasty meals, motivating your friends to get moving and being all-round awesome, a Fit Girl has to get her energy from somewhere! If you really need an excuse to take a moment for some shut eye, here are 4 reasons to take a nap and a chance for you to learn how the different types of naps may affect you.
The Power nap - 15 to 20 minutes
Taking a nap for this length of time has been found to improve the feeling of alertness, mental performance and reaction times. Even during the busiest of days, you can afford to take a nap for 15 to 20 minutes especially when will continue to feel the benefits for up to 3 hours later, without affecting your sleep later that night.
The Restoration nap - 30 minute
When you sleep for this length of time, it's likely that you'll wake up feeling a little bit groggy. This isn't ideal, but still worth it. If you got as little as two hours of sleep the night before, a nap for 30 minutes could restore your body to normality and compensate for the chemical imbalances caused by a really poor sleep!
The Memory nap - 60 minutes
Sleeping between 45 and 60 minutes is enough time to enjoy some slow wave sleep, which is the deepest kind of sleep when you start to dream. This is when your brain is also able to organize facts, faces and names and store them, improving you ability to retrieve them from your memory in the future.
The Creative full cycle nap - 90 minutes
Our body takes on different cycles as we sleep somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. A nap which lasts the full length of one cycle allows you to go through all of the stages and gets the most benefits without that weird disorientated feeling when you wake up. If you have the time to take this length of nap make sure to time it earlier on in the day so that it doesn't have an impact on your sleep that night.
Between 1pm and 3pm is the ideal time to take a nap and also around that time when you get the afternoon slump. So instead of reaching for the cup of coffee to keep your eyes open in the middle of the day, settle yourself down in a quiet place and have a nap! Go on, your body will thank you!
