Harkonnen, interesting post! Standard operating procedure for me is a daily half-hour nap in addition to my 8 hours. If you’re doing a split or a polyphasic pattern, if you have the luxury/freedom to sleep as brain chemicals drop and as your body/brain needs it, I can’t see how that would work against
one’s body composition goals. That of course is just my opinion. However, as humans we all have slightly different cycles and sleep requirements, yet we still try and plug ourselves into the 8 to 5 routine.
Thanks for your post.
I’ve been doing this for a long time and I have always been wondering if this is detrimental to gains as I’ve heard that your body needs the 8 hours staright.
I wake at 8am, go to work, get home around 6pm and I feel tired/sleepy although I have a sedentary office job.
I usually take a nap for about 1.5 hours. I automaticlly wake up after 1.5 hours and can never understand how some people can take 15-30 min naps.
I go to the gym around 8pm and get back at 10pm and go to bed at 12-1am (but don’t fall asleep until like 2am.
I thought that the short sleep at night was the cause of my sleepiness when I get home from work.
Very few sleep researchers consider polyphasic, reduced sleep cycles to be healthy. The “crazy genius” I believe you are referring to would have been Leonardo Da Vinci, and he did not maintain that sleep cycle indefinitely. Eventually he had to go back to a normal pattern. Look at it this way: your body needs a certain amount of REM sleep and deep sleep (as well as the other stages, but REM and deep seem to be the most critical). If you’re sleeping for 15 minutes on the hour, it’s going to be difficult for you to get into any reasonable amount of REM sleep, since every time you wake up, the 90 minute sleep cycle has to start from scratch. You’ll be able to get a very light sleep, which can be refreshing, but does not provide the full physiological benefits of solid sleep. Further, if you’re reducing your sleep time, you won’t be getting the recuperative benefits of deep sleep.
I find it hard to believe that a person sleeping only four hours a day is going to have the same mental alertness, long term, as a person that sleeps eight hours a day. To me, this is a bit like cutting your car maintenance in half and arguing that the car seems to run just as well as it did before; over time, it’s going to run down worse than it would’ve otherwise. The standards for assessing ‘mental alertness’ also need to be defined here.
I think afternoon naps are great ideas, but that total sleep time should still be in the range of 7.5-9 hours. Ideally, the amount of time you sleep (at any one time beyond 15-20 minutes) should be evenly divisible by 90 minutes, since that’s the length of a sleep cycle, and waking up in the middle of a cycle can make you groggy for the rest of the day.
As far as your point about siestas, most people I know that take siestas aren’t working for 12-18 hours a day.
One more thing: there is definitely a natural tendency to sleep in the afternoons, so afternoon naps are really great ways to refresh oneself. One note: you should either take a short nap (15 to 20 minutes) or a long one (at least 90 minutes, or any multiple of 90), because waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle can make a person very groggy for the rest of the day.
Also, research on our circadian rhythms has shown that we actually prefer to go to bed an hour later and wake up an hour later every day (that is, we’re naturally on a 25 hour cycle). I recommend the book Powersleep<\i> to help get your sleep problems under control.
I just wanted to add to my last post. Nephrom, I hope you catch this because it looks like you have some great resources on the circadian rhythm and sleep cycles.
I was in the bookstore last night and was reading out of a book on BB, Explosive Growth, I think it was. Under the subject of sleep and its importance, the author stated that the nice thing about sleep is that it didn't matter whether you did an 8-hour stint or slept in 2- or 4-hour blocks, that the body benefited equally. He also added that it took 60 to 90 minutes to get into the deepest sleep slage and that that was were restoration (I assume he's refering to both CNS & muscular) took place.
Based on what I read, it would seem to me that sleeping for as long as you are able (even if it's only 6 hours) and taking a nap wouldn't work again one's body composition goals.
I was in the bookstore last night and was reading out of a book on BB, Explosive Growth, I think it was. Under the subject of sleep and its importance, the author stated that the nice thing about sleep is that it didn't matter whether you did an 8-hour stint or slept in 2- or 4-hour blocks, that the body benefited equally. He also added that it took 60 to 90 minutes to get into the deepest sleep slage and that that was were restoration (I assume he's refering to both CNS & muscular) took place.
Based on what I read, it would seem to me that sleeping for as long as you are able (even if it's only 6 hours) and taking a nap wouldn't work again one's body composition goals.
Like I said before, it’s stupid to drug yourself to go to sleep. EC pre-workout stacks are one thing, but you should have to drug yourself to do something that should come naturally (ie. sleep).
My point is, if you have trouble getting to sleep at night, consider the 6-2 split before you consider drugs.
Another point I’d like to make is that for your afternoon nap I recommend that you sleep in the fetal position if you can. This is because blood will keep flowing and you won’t feel groggy when you awaken.
I agree that sleeping 4h a cycle is a bad idea. However, my point was that if people can get by on 4x1h a cycle and function well mentally, then a 6-2 split should, logically, make one better rested. You get 8 hours, but you split it.
There’s nothing wrong with dividing the same amount of sleep time up into multiple sessions, as long as you follow the general rule that you should sleep one hour for every two that you plan to be awake. So, for example, if I needed to work for 12 hours, I could just sleep for 6, and go back to sleep after my work was completed. You can go back to sleep earlier, of course, but it might be difficult :).
Tampa Terry, as long as your total sleep time is the same, you can certainly split things up (based on what I’ve read, at least). Bodybuilders sometimes do require more sleep than average folk, though, because of all the stress we put on our bodies and CNSs.
Had a late hockey game last night (started at 11pm) and wasn’t in bed till 1 am. Got 6 hours of sleep and today I feel more rested then I have in a couple of weeks?!? My training felt great also. Maybe less sleep was the answer. I know I probably won’t make it long on only 6 hours every day, but I am gonna try going only 7 or 7 1/2 and see how it goes.
Toldja so!
Everyone has different sleep requirements. Play around with the times and see what makes you feel best. Who knows, it might just be 6 hours/night (although this would be VERY unusual - but not impossible).