Does anyone have experience with breaking up their sleep while training?
I am starting a graveyard shift soon and Im trying to figure out the best way to approach the sleep schedule and training.
GCN should do a videoâŚ
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Look up biphasic sleeping. When I was younger i would do this when I did a couple (<3 or so) overnights in a row. The main benefit was you were up during the day so still saw the sun and were able to get daytime stuff done. Wasnât really training back then so canât comment on whether itâs better to do that or just sleep solid from a training perspective. If I was doing many more than 3 nights in a row though Iâd just sleep solid all day though.
By the time I was in my 30s biphasic stopped working because of increased difficulty falling asleep later in the day. Any sleep post nights I get has to start immediately after finishing work.
I donât think I could do split sleeping myself but it doesnât seem to do the Spanish etc any harm.
I did this for about 5 years. I found that it was hard to sleep during the day. After about a year I would sleep just 4 hours in a 24 hour period. This maybe ok for some but not ideal. Hard training days would zap the energy right out of me.
I wish you luck.
Highly suggest you read the book âWhy We Sleepâ by Matthew Walker.
It explains why this is a terrible idea that will not work.
Even if you do find a way to sleep in multiple 4hr stints (which would be very very difficult given the bodyâs circadian rhythm fighting you) youâre not getting the right kind of sleep and itâll eventually crush you. The body goes through different REM and deep sleep cycles throughout the night, and youâd be missing out on the second part of that every night.
Z2 training can be split up. Threshold training can be done twice a day. Sleep canât.
I think he also refutes the idea that some cultures have done this in the past so itâs ânaturalâ, or at least explained that it came as a result of it being dark out for 12+hrs a night with limited ability to make lightâŚso people would sleep for awhile, get up in the middle of the night to read or eat or talk and then sleep again through to sunrise. So theyâre still getting 8+hrs of sleep within a 10-12hr timeframe.
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Read that book, loved it!
When he talks about biphasic sleeping (practiced successfully in some cultures) it is more in the sense of sleeping a shorter phase during the day (âsiestaâ). So you wouldnât split your sleep evenly but just have a longer nap (1-2h) around noon.
As @timon said, splitting it evenly sounds like youâd be missing out on important sleep phases.
So if your graveyard shift is roughly midnight-8am, why canât you train right after work?
Itâs actually logistically easier than juggling training and the proverbial 9-5, IMO.
When I was younger, me and a friend experimented with biphasic and polyphasic sleep (sleep less at night, but nap regularly) because it sounded like a cool idea. In all the tries I started to feel âhang-overâ and not well rested after some days. I was probably missing deep sleep stages or so.
Canât recommend.
Training in the morning after work has been my plan. And what Iâll try when I start.
But everyone is saying youâre tired when you get off.
So thatâs why I was asking about experience breaking up sleep.
Seinfeld did an episode about that IIRC! It didnât work out wellâŚ
Thatâs all I could think about while reading through this topic.
Sleeping through the night in one go is a relatively modern thing.
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Iâm a medical resident. My sleep schedule constantly in flux. When Iâm on nights, I always find it easier to train before work than when I get home.
EhâŚthat article is referencing one relatively short period in 2+ million years of human civilization.
And itâs an appeal to nature fallacy. Just because it was done that way doesnât make it better or correct. As they said, the reasons seemed to be religious and logistical (stoking the fire, peeing, doing chores, probably changing guard duty shiftsâŚetc) not for actual sleep quality.
AND Iâd reiterate that all the sleep was still happening within a 10-11hr window at night. Thatâs very very different from the OP working all night, getting off work and sleeping from 7-11am, doing a training ride, eating dinner, then sleeping from 6-10pm and going back to work from 11-7 or whatever.
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Well almost 2,000 years. Not sure we know too much about sleeping habits from 2 million years ago.
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More like 4500 yearsâŚbut whoâs counting.
I was being conservative and likely much longer
Thatâs a fraction of a percent in the history of upright man. 4500 years is still a fraction of a percent.
I donât know what your point is either. Yes, thereâs clearly records of people sleeping in a biphasic way. Does that make it right or natural or optimal? Iâd say absolutely not.
Should the OP try sleeping communally with a group of his neighbors because they did that 3000 years ago?
And what do you know about the history of sleeping habits of upright man a million years ago? Is there any reason to suppose their sleeping patterns were as now?