I get varying hours of sleep ranging from 4 to 8 (maybe 9 or 10 on weekends) and if you coffee it up at work, and Power Drive it for your workout u will do fine – I make slow gains, but they keep coming. (went from 150 to 165 in 6 months)
This might be due to be simply being a beginner though.
Also I’ve always wondered if this will add up in the end to create problems. Has anyone else trained like this for a while?
I’m sure that I read an article recently saying that not only should you get 8 hours of sleep but you should be in bed before 11. That sounds like bull to me… What’s the difference if I sleep from 2am to 10am??
Like anything, time is a priority issue. I don’t have a job, a marriage, and whatever else some people can add on to that. I am just a high school student very engaged in learning and EC and doing. My thoughts on not having time have changed drastically this year. I am in IB, a program which if done correctly, any highschool student can tell you means unending reading lists and essays. I am not gonig to bitch about the work load because everyone thinks they have it rough, but realize that this isn’t your “jack off in class” curriculum. Getting straight to my observation, we will get a 6 hour reading assignment for a class to do over two days, and when we come to class, 9 times out of 10, 9 out of 10 students haven’t done their reading. The excuse is consistently “I just didn’t have the time…” but then when we get in conversation, last night’s episode of friends, or American Idol, or what have you inevitably come up, and the same people who couldn’t find 6 hours to read over the last 48 hours have easily knocked out a good session of 4-6 hours of telivision. They legitimately think they simply didn’t have the time to read. The kicker, everyone in IB gets around 4 hours of sleep a night and they aren’t partying, they are staying up doing home work. I took a harder courseload than the rest of my grade this year and I still managed to hit the gym 5 times a week, make my 6 meals a day, get every single assignment done, captain various ECs, and ALWAYS get 8-10 hours of sleep a night. To those of you with shifts taht start and end less than 8 hours a part, then there isn’t much you can do, but if you simply don’t have “time” to sleep, I think it is fairly safe to say you don’t make time to sleep.
As far as the inquiry to “why does it matter when you sleep?” Simply put, “the sun.” Unless you sleep in a pitch dark hole, your body actually undergoes a change when the sun comes up in the morning and basically, there is a hormonal shift which encourages your body to wake up. Whether you wake up or not is arguably inconsequential, because your body is ready to awaken but doesn’t because your still tired. Obviously not optimal. Secondly, there are a series of conditions and corelations between people who don’t get enough “sun”, the most direct of which being SAD. I have never worried about that too much, if you are getting your 8-10 hours, your doing better than most of the world so I wouldn’t get too picky with the times.
I have been working intensively in the field of sleep medicine for the last year and a half. Here are a few facts on sleep that are relevant to resistance training and recovery:
Sleep is an active, not passive, process in which you’re body recovers, grows, and rejuvenates itself.
Sleep can be broken down into 5 different stages. Stages 1-4, and REM.
-Stage 3 of sleep, also known as Delta wave sleep is where most of your mental and physical recoupereation takes place.
At the Beginning of stage 3 sleep the body releases a surge of Growth Hormone! If stage 3 sleep isn’t reached then this release of hormone is missed
REM sleep is also extremely important. At this point in sleep the body is in a stage of near paralysis. Muscle tension is at its lowest point. Breathing becomes more erratic and shallow, blood pressure increases slightly as compared to other sleep stages.
Without REM sleep, sleep effectiveness is suboptimal. Many different factors can inhibit a person from ever reaching adequate amounts of REM in a night of sleep.
Alright, there are some facts on sleep. If you have any more questions feel free to ask. I’m sure if I don’t have the answer, I know where to find it.
I’ll second the idea of sleeping in complete darkness. It may have been Coach Staley who suggested buying a blindfold and earplugs. I don’t need the plugs where I sleep, but the blindfold has made a big difference in how long I sleep, and I think quality (which was the coach’s point).
I’ll throw in my two cents: after years of going to sleep late and waking up on my own, averaging 9 - 10 hours of sleep a night, I have a job that forces me to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, 4:45 am. So I guess I should go to bed at 8 pm, right? No dice. For whatever reason, (its summer and the suns still up, my family is still up and about) I just cant wind down any earlier than 9:30 pm if im lucky. Oftentimes I’ll try to go to bed at 9, then end up getting restless and getting out of bed to wander around for an hour. Any suggestions on forcing my body to wind down earlier?
I used to sleep less than 6 hours a night, now I’m 9-11. My training, diet, everything elses has remained the same. The gains in everything (especially recovery time) are unbelievably better.
[quote]testosterific wrote:
I have been working intensively in the field of sleep medicine for the last year and a half.
-Stage 3 of sleep, also known as Delta wave sleep is where most of your mental and physical recoupereation takes place.
[/quote]
testosterific,
Is there any way to tell, apart from a formal sleep study, if you are consistantly reaching Stage 3?
You guys should try working shift work with 3 shifts changing every 2 weeks. On Midnight shift I rarely get more then 4-5 hours and feel like crap for the whole 2 weeks. Yes I have black plywood on my window but the body just knows it’s daytime and time to be awake…On top of that I’m a single dad raising two kids on my own. Trying to work in time for working out. I’m new to bodybuilding and determined but man it’s tough… maybe I need a new job…
I am still a teenager so I do not have years of lifting experience, but in reference to just putting on height, your body demands rest. Over this summer I have grown ~2 inches, which is signifigent- most of which was attained over a 3 week relaxing vacation. Even though I was rather sedate, (I did bring a bar and buckets for water to lift with), I was constantly tired. I was getting around 10 hours of sleep a night and possibly 2 in the day. I ated that but loved the result. Sure you might get by with 5- I do that in the school year, but your cheating your life and gains.
The more sleep dept you have the more fatigued your body will be, the body in a constant state of fatigued is very counterproductive to your goals.
Dude sleep should be your priority right now and until you die, sleep is as important or more important then your nutrition plan (your diet).
Remember your body doesn’t recover during your workout but rather after your workout and especially during the night. Your recovery ability is enhanced with your optimal sleep quantity.
It’s better to get quality sleep then quantity sleep.
[quote]BOSS wrote:
sleep is as important or more important then your nutrition plan (your diet).
[/quote]
Wow! No disrespect intended, but where’s the empirical evidence on this one…?
Stallone,
I have suffered from sleep apnea (according to the specialist; out of a 1000 people with SA about three would have it as bad as I did.)I’m now free from it. With severe SA getting more sleep doesn’t do much because you miss out on the deeper stages. At my worst I was on holiday from work (2 weeks) and spent at least 12hrs in bed, but still managed to fall asleep through the day.
I’m not certain but narclepsy is more of a brain disorder and not related to sleep quality / quantity.
According to my specialist and own experience; Alcohol worsens SA, A neck size of 17+inches is correlated with more instances of SA (mine was 19in for a while). SA is often associated with VERY loud snoring and also large tonsils (due to them reducing the internal"bore" of your throat). When I talk of loud snoring I’m talking really LOUD, in my case I would often wake up with small amounts of blood coming from my (sore) throat.
Hope it helps. BTW I believe narcolepsy tends to run in families.
Oh yeah I just remembered, there are two types of SA, one (like mine) which is structural and the other called central I think due again to a brain malfunction. Apparently central is easiest to treat through medication.
Old Dax
T bone 2, how long do people last
Old Dax
[quote]Old Dax wrote:
T bone 2, how long do people last
Old Dax[/quote]
Come on Dax, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about 6 vs. 8-10 hours of sleep, not no food or no sleep.
I have a very hard time getting enough sleep. I give myself at least 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep time but I always wake up multiple times during the night and I never feel refreshed when I wake up. My quality of life is definitely suffering and I’m sure my gains in the gym are. I sleep in a basement so there is virtually no light and the temperature is a constant 68 - 70 degrees. There are neighborhood dogs that bark and wake me up occasionally but even when they’re silent I still wake up several times during the night. I just started taking cytodyne’s ZMA product, Z-Mass PM, about a week ago and haven’t noticed any improvement. Has anyone ever tried L-Tryptophan? I’d like to try it if I can get ahold of some. I found a few places on the internet that had it for sale but I was a little skeptical because I thought it was banned by the FDA.
My parents, being aware that I have trouble sleeping, recently recorded this hour long special on ABC about sleep. In it, they interviewed the expert doctors from places like Stanford who said that without a doubt getting too little sleep is detrimental to your health. It has been well established in studies that not getting enough sleep increases the risk of cancer, diabetes and heart disease among other things. They also said that new studies are showing that attention deficit disorders are linked to sleep disorders like sleep apnea.
T-Bone: I’m not exactly sure what the purpose is of this thread anymore. Knowledgable people have responded to your post, including a sleep medicine expert for christsake.
If your life requires you to get 6 hours of sleep, fine. 8 hours is better.
RIT Jared
Ill throw something out there for discussion for Testosterific and everyone else. What are your opinions on waking up in the middle of the night to eat? Right now i wake up with an alarm every middle of the night and down some cottage cheese, then fall right back asleep. Other than this i sleep like im in a deep coma (thank you ZMA!) Am i interrupting the release of growth hormone by doing this?