Jocko Willink and Sleep/Recovery

The second question is much easier to answer than the first one. I get to bed around 2030-2100. I then get woken up usually twice a night, typically around midnight and then about 0200. Some nights it’s more, but 2 is the minimum. In terms of how much sleep I’m getting, that’s hard to answer without some sort of sleep study.

Your sleep schedule sounds awesome. It’s the kind of schedule that I’d like to have, but unfortunately it can’t happen given the industry I work in. Too much working with people on the other side of the planet.

Do you feel rested when you get up to lift?

I actually don’t mind Jocko. He doesn’t post BS quotes or photos of himself half naked posing like others. He’s also actually backed up what he says.

Like others have said, 4-5 hours of sleep is normal for some regardless of being a seal or not.

Personally, I get 7-8. With daylights savings coming up, I’m going to use it to my benefit and wake up at the same internal clock time, which would now be an hour earlier. I’ve found that regardless of when I go to sleep, I wake up at 6. So, theoretically, I could now wake up 5.

The only time I feel rested in on vacation, haha. But yeah, it isn’t a bad gig. 2 to 3 times a month I have to operate off 3 hours of sleep due to work demands, but training seems to still go ok.

Sorry to pull out an old thread, but this topic is interesting to me.

Jocko is just a REALLY disciplined guy. He rarely drinks anything but water, goes to bed at 10-10:30 (you get better rest when hitting the pillow before 12) and rises around 4:00- 4:30 so that is 6 hours of sleep roughly. He even says sometimes he will go to bed later or earlier but usually is up no later than 4:30.

I personally have trained myself to run off 6 hours of sleep. There are days when the kids are away that I might binge sleep and stay in bed till 10am, but most of the time life calls and I’m in bed by 12-1 AM and up between 6:00 - 7:00.

As teens or young adult, (basically before families and careers) our bodies get used to 8-9-10 hours of sleep - basically we haven’t trained our bodies to rest efficiently at that point. Once you set your schedule and force your body to get a few of those 90 minute sleep cycles in, you might be surprised how little sleep you can get and wake up feeling ok.

As far as TRT - Special operators’ have private Dr’s / Medics who keep their health up. These guys are valuable assets to the military and get what they need, when they need it I’ve heard its not uncommon for them to have some help in the T area, especially if they are deployed to a combat zone. I don’t know if most of the guys stay on that dosing during their training time or down time - my guess is yes, but I don’t know for sure.

Also very common is taking Adderall or some other pharma grade amphetamine. Again the duration and amount of use I’m not certain, but I do know its common to have a guy pop a couple when heading on night mission, or if something urgent comes up, after a few days of little sleep.

BTW Most of these guys are very disciplined and aren’t the kind to do these things recreationally or let them become a crutch, so its not they are “cheating” but when the stakes are literally life and death, you’ll take whatever advantage you can get. And remember your competition/enemy is doing the same and more as far as chemicals go.

Quality of sleep is more important than quantity of sleep.

I sleep from 11PM to 5AM each day. Only 6 hours of sleep daily. But I get into bed at 11, and I’m out cold by 11:05. I never feel like I’m not rested enough. I occasionally take a nap mid day for like 30-45 minutes.

The human body is remarkable. You can ADJUST to a lot of different things.

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I know quite a few from/in recovery. These guys have no limits. When they worked, they worked hard. When they partied, they partied hard. Like nothing was off the table. Nothing.

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I agree with you, they do party pretty hard. Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some operators from Army, Navy and Marines. They are def high speed guys, more prone to risk taking and I can def see some of their ego’s getting them into trouble - many seemed to be of the opinion that “addiction was a sign of weakness” which can be a very dangerous mentality.

Going only from what I saw and heard - the partying almost always included fairly heavy drinking. There wasn’t a lot of downtime with the guys I knew, but when they had it, there was a lot of boozing going on. Lots of them smoked and chewed tobacco as well. I can say this was similar with my college wrestling days (at least with the younger operators) lots of high T, competitive and very physical guys, blowing off steam by sitting around trying to out do one another over a bottle of Jack.

It of course wasn’t uncommon to hear about an 8ball or two between the boys on a long weekend or something. BUT again from what I knew, these guys kept it under wraps and kept to a recreational / occasional thing it never became a problematic thing.

Having said all of that, I would say there’s a high probability for Opiate addiction. That’d be for all military vets, not just spec ops guys. I remember back just 10-15 years ago, military docs & VA would just toss bottles of opiates at guys, some of whom really had serious pain issues and others were just a little sore or maybe just depressed.

The old term in the Army was “Ranger candy”. Due to jumping out of aircraft, repelling out of choppers with lots of gear + just rucking around , these guys would have all kinds of back and knee problems. Ranger candy used to be just a handful of Advil a day- but as you got up the line it became handful of Percocet, and eventually several Oxy’s a day. People are much more aware of opiate addiction now, but I know lots of veterans who had pill adictions…if not properly treated, those guys fall into black market opiates or just straight up Heroin as its def cheaper and sometimes easier to find.

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A lot of different things…does that include Alzheimers? That should be a fun one to “adjust” to later in life.

You’re fooling yourself. You have Andenosine built up in your head, that’s why you feel the need to take naps…not good. 7hrs/night is the minimum. Sure you feel fine now, but wait till later in life…

I have to ask, what is your background to make such a claim?

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Humans have been taking naps since the beginning of time. So that’s a bit of a stretch to say. I run a business with a multiple employees. I think eventually you get tired enough you want to take a nap lol.

We are talking about adjusting to lack of sleep with heavy consistent exercise. We are not talking about diseases.

Plus I think the 6 hour sleep thing is in my blood. My grandparents have averaged 5-6 hours of sleep from their late teens until now (in there upper 90s). My grandparents are still kicking and healthy.

Quality of sleep is still better than quantity of sleep. 6-10 hours seems to be the range. I happen to fall in to the lower end of the scale.

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Have not read this thread, just saw the title and wanted to add something. This is my alarm every morning:

I love Jocko.

So you’re positive you’re one of the 1%? I hope you’re right:

good luck…

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My family has a good trick where no one lives long enough to suffer from these maladies.

I always found banking on a long lifespan in general a risky venture.

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You’re acting as if people are choosing to get 4 hours sleep just for shits and giggles. I would imagine most people do it because they have things in their life they value more than whether or not they are tired.

This is my counter argument to the ‘IF can help you live longer’ stance. If you get hit by a bus at 45, you will regret not having bacon and eggs more often to start the day.

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Why wait til 45 to regret not having bacon and eggs? I can do that now.

I find that there are three kinds of people when it comes to recovery/sleep.

-Those who cannot pay attention to such things because they’re simply too busy trying to make ends meet/achieve a certain goal

-Those who spend an inordinate amount of time on such things to the possible exclusion of other things.

-Dumb-ass people who waste time playing video games or partying into the whee hours of the morning.

I agree wholeheartedly.

To be more serious- This seems to depend heavily on the person. As a personal example, my dad slept about 4-6 hours a day for decades. He then started having severe migraines and inability to sleep well in his mid 50s. No one has any idea what’s causing this, and he now attributes it to the lack of sleep he got in his younger years.

No idea if his belief is accurate or not, but for the average people 7-8 hours of sleep seems to be very important. Not getting enough sleep will probably come to bite you in the ass eventually.