Friday, 3 August 2012

Conclusions

I have found that on an excessive exercise schedule I was able to maintain with a 4 hour core nap and 2-3 twenty minute naps. On the lesser sleeping programs I feel that they are very possible to use if you reduce the amount of exercise and stick to a very strict pattern. This likely means no drinking and drugs (though some drinking could probably be accommodated on the 2.5 or 4 hour schedule.

As far as hanging out with Mary J goes my experience was it made it very difficult to stick to the schedules. I did some research and found that marijuana decreases your ability to get rem sleep (which during these schedule is very important). This was not the largest problem I found when trying it myself however. My largest problem was that I tried sleeping when I was still high. This made it very hard for me to fall asleep as I wanted to just lay there and enjoy the awesome thoughts and realizations. When I spaced it out so there was a large gap between use and napping I found that the naps like my research said were less recuperative probably due to less rem sleep. For these reasons I minimized use during this period.

Alcohol was the bigger killer for me and seemed to be the tipping point that dropped me to different sleep patterns a few times. If you plan on actually drinking and not just having a drink or two its almost impossible to maintain the strict pattern needed for uberman sleep or even the 2.5 hour everyman. Not only this but it instantly made me feel like garbage (of course I drank through this stage) and left me low energy for a couple of days.

I tried using caffeine and pre-workout mix during this sleep period a couple times as well. When I took my pre-workout before going to the gym in the morning I found that the work out was really good cause I had so much energy but trying to fall asleep for my 9am was difficult. I still managed to sleep but I think it was only for like 5 of the 20 minutes (at least that's how it felt). It just didn't make me feel right overall like something was off, I was jittery and even felt a little sick at times so I only used it those couple times.

Well I guess that's it if anyone has any questions about anything post comments and I will respond. Also if I decide to do another thing like this or start uberman again sometime I might blog about it again. I promise to stay on top of the blogs though so it keeps some personality and doesn't become "then this happened and then I felt ok and then I missed a nap.... blah blah blah" really sorry.

peace

Wrap Up

The 4 Hour Core

I have failed at being a blogger. This is because I fell behind and didn't catch up. I have let you down world you have my deepest apologies. As a result I am going to wrap a couple weeks up with very little details.

Once I transitioned to the 4 hour core naps (usually not actually 4 hours as I was waking up around 3:40 naturally for probably the first week) I felt that I was able to maintain both Muay Thai and the gym. If I ever did feel overly tired or worn down I would just toss in another 20 min nap. In this sense I would consider the experiment a success. I feel that a very intense level of exercise can be maintained on a reduced number of sleeping hours with the help of a Polyphasic sleeping pattern.

For those of you who have been wondering how I am able to get out of bed rather than lay there and enjoy the warm beautiful comfort of sleep this will probably help explain. I recently found this and it is going to be my new personal anthem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNL_DAI19_I
so worth a listen.

My naps have gotten super weird (especially my 9am nap) cause I am dreaming almost all of the time and there are many points during my dreams where I am not sure if I am dreaming or not. I even have had this feeling while I am awake sometimes. This is one of the strangest feelings I have ever had but other than this feeling which is just after waking up I am very alert and have easily as much energy as I did before I started this.

One strange thing about the dreams is the fact that I keep dreaming I am driving my car usually when I am napping in my car. This really freaks me out because I am never able to steer so i crash into things. It seems incredibly realistic and sometimes I will wake up numerous times to another driving dream. I have started figuring out whether or not I am sleeping by just slugging someone on the street in the face (its not quite the spinning top from inception but it gets the job done). So far I have not punched anyone in real life to check if I was dreaming but it seems like I am getting closer to this. As a result of this checking if I am dreaming I have had a ton of lucid dreams which is so sweet.

I feel that this pattern may become the regular way I sleep. It allows  me to stay up and work but also get up early in the  morning both of which I enjoy. If I ever feel I am not getting enough sleep I can either extent my core a bit or toss in a couple extra naps to make up for it.

I felt like the tiredness (from excessive exercise and too little sleep) was making me very ineffective at getting done the things I needed. I was still doing plenty of stuff that was interesting and beneficial but it was not things that I needed or originally wanted to get done. It seemed to have shifted my perspective to one of immense procrastination. Once I changed to the everyman 4 hour I felt my priorities come back and I am studying mandarin again and working on my projects.

I think that my cravings for sugar are still there though it is not as strong as it was before. I think this is less due to the sleep now and more because not eating things that are bad for me has become a habit. Hopefully I will be able to maintain this or at least not binge super hard which is my usual problem. I seem to have a mentality like well I ate 1 donut so I messed up already may as well eat the other 11.

Back to "Normal"

I started to get a cold sometime last week. I kept my 4 hour schedule until I started coughing a lot and decided to give it a rest and stop exercising as hard. I went to around 7 hours of total sleep, some of which is naps and sometimes numerous cores other times just one long sleep. I don't think that the sleeping schedule was the main reason that I got sick. I do think it is partially because instead of slowing down when it first started happening I tried to exercise through to the other side. I didn't make the jump :( .

An example of my new sleeping style is yesterday I had 1 twenty minute nap (lucid :) ), a 2 hour and 45 minute core and then a 4 hour core.

Even now when I am getting normal amounts of sleep I still look forward to this 9am nap in my car and it is always my best sleep. I have also managed to continue having very vivid dreams and I have gotten lucid like three times in the last week.

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Day 22-24 too much

Monday was harder than many of the others have been. I think this is still the alcohol leaving my body. I felt pretty normal at work though and was able to nap very well at 9am. This nap is still my favorite time to sleep, and I look forward to it more than I do my core sleep at night. I went to the gym doing the workout outlined in my plan. My energy levels are pretty much normal. Most people wouldn't know that I am sleeping differently. I was not very able to sleep other than that first nap, the next two were just ok because it was really hot out and I had a lot of trouble sleeping.

Tuesday when I woke up I felt the same as I had the previous week on Tuesday. Pretty sore but nothing I wouldn't have expected. I am a little sleepier the days after a workout but nothing crazy. Mauy Thai was extremely hard today. We trained for upwards of two hours in 35 degree C with high humidity felt like 42. I do not do well with heat though and felt sick with a headache through a good portion of this training. My shoulders were extremely fatigued from working them out on Monday. I found it hard to even hold pads let alone hit them. I crashed hard after this and ended up taking my core pretty early in the night.

Wednesday I was pretty exhausted, I was finding it hard to stay awake at work but after my first couple of naps that got better. My muscles felt much more tired than the previous week. When I went to the gym my whole body felt sore. I started to get shin splints in my left leg and my shoulders felt tired almost instantly when skipping. I feel like my body is not able to recover when I only have the 2.5 hour core and 4-5 naps. So now I am going to transition to a 4 hour core with 2-3 naps.

Overall it didn't feel that bad to be on the 2.5 hour with 4-5 as long as I kept it to just working out or Mauy Thai. If I am doing both though there just feels like there is not enough recovery time. I won't lie I feel I didn't give this sleep pattern as much of a chance as I could have. If I kept pushing through my body might have become accustomed to this training but it really felt like I was just breaking down more and more.

4 hours at night should be alright because it still will let me stay up late and work and get up in the morning. I am glad that I only will be taking 2-3 naps during the day as this means I can avoid the super hot sun car naps. These were actually terrible and many times I walked back into work soaking wet with sweat. It always amused me to think about what other people thought if they saw me sleeping in my car in the parking lot in like 35 degree weather with no shirt (I started taking it off to sleep because it was getting too sweaty) and a pillow.


Monday, 23 July 2012

Day 19-21 The Dangers of Alcohol

So it was on this weekend that I decided to re-introduce myself to that mystical liquid we all know, love and hate. ALCOHOL. Well to start myself and a friend were driving to Calgary to hang out with a buddy for the first night of stampede. I was able to trade off driving with this friend so I was able to take naps on the way there. I forgot my earplugs though which are now a necessity I keep on me almost 24 hours of the day, as you never know when the opportunity for a good nap will strike. This meant that most of my naps were filled with me coming in and out of sleep. Once we arrived we did a quick arms circuit with some weights and chairs and other things around the apartment (so nothing intense). We planned to head to a bar that night maybe stampede grounds if it so intrigued us.

I was planning not to really drink, I thought I would try just having a couple but to quote a great man "Once it hits your lips its just so good". I ended up finishing a 26 of vodka and a six pack before leaving the apartment. Also spent $140 dollars at the bar. Went black-ops all night no idea where I was and my friends had no idea either. I apparently walked into the bar and vanished like my memory. Either way they found me much later that night in another part of Calgary with the help of a friendly Canadian Bagel employee who after finding me drove us all home. I know you will probably never see this but thank-you very much my bagel angel or bangel.

The hangover was no where near what I thought it would be. I have no idea how long I slept that night. When I woke I definitely didn't feel refreshed from a longer than usual sleep. I took some naps on the drive from Calgary to Edmonton but I still was having trouble falling asleep. I did not have sore muscles from exercise though my entire body kind of felt sore/abused. I was not overly tired at any point this day even though I only had a couple of less than adequate naps. I feel that I am partially just becoming very good at functioning in a sleep deprived state.

When we made it to the BBQ I had a couple of beers over the course of the day but nothing serious, mostly just chilled with buddies. Well that was until it got dark and we decided to have roman candle fights!! How this worked was each person got a roman candle and a garbage can lid for a shield. The fireworks were lit at the same time and then both fighters ran away from each other until their first shot went off when they could turn and start firing on the other. Great time, a couple minor injuries and only 1 face shot. After all this I was worried about being tempted to oversleep as I did not have much to do. So I just stayed up the latest around the fire and woke up as soon as I heard people. This again was longer than I should be sleeping but really not by that much.

In the morning I felt much better and mentally reinforced that I was going to stick with the sleeping pattern even after this weekend of mistakes. I still had trouble napping during the drive but was able to get a couple naps in once I had returned home. I felt that my muscles had recovered reasonably well from the previous week of exercise and I was going to add Muay Thai as well now.

Tuesday, 17 July 2012

Day 16 - 18 Back to the GYM!!!!

 I usually went to the gym at 6:00am before I would head to work but I thought that might leave me overly energized for my 9am nap. Instead I went at 5:30 after taking a nap at 5. During the work day I felt more sleepy than usual. I think this is because of the amount of oversleeping I did on the weekend. I am going to need a bit of time to get used to a different schedule again. My workout went alright, I was using the same or very similar weights to before I started. The largest difference I have found is that my muscles seem to fatigue more quickly. This could also be due to the fact that I am no longer taking a pre-workout mix which let me power through this. Other than the muscle fatigue the rest of the workout felt very normal. Afterward I didn't feel as good as I usually do. I am not sure if this is because my body is not releasing endorphins like it usually does from exercise or if its again because I am not taking the pre-workout (which is a really strong stimulant, my honest guess is its not taking the pre-workout).

I am writing this in retrospect from notes that I made along the way. I realize now that at night I was becoming extremely inefficient. First off during this week I watched 3 movies and spent a of my time reading interesting though unimportant articles around the interweb. I was very unmotivated. I am not sure if this was due to the sleeping pattern or some other source. I was not overly tired during the week but I did find that I was procrastinating super badly.

Mauy Thai was cancelled this week so my body got a bit of a break. Though on tues and wed I still did the workouts that I outlined in one of my initial posts. I headed to Calgary on friday and did a kinda of arms workout there. Over this whole time I did not feel that I was not recovering and had muscle soreness around what I would have expected from taking a couple of days off from the gym.

Over this time I had a couple oversleeps but they were nothing serious maybe a half hour was the longest. I enjoy having the one long core nap because it gives you that time to lay in a bed which feels soooooooo good, especially after depriving myself of it so much. I would take the 20 minute naps in less of a structured fashion as well. I would generally try to spread them out evenly but if it didn't work out I did not have to worry.

I am still eating alright though I am much more tempted by unhealthy foods now. This seems to come and go a bit.

I know this was sparse in its explanation and details. If you have any specific questions I would be more than happy to answer them. 


Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Day 13 - 15: The Undoing

Day 13:
Once I got up to Meadow I didn't find it too hard to take naps during the day. My buddy was very supportive which made it super easy. I was napping in the back of a boat sometimes, back of a car, or in a cabin. The first night was tough though, from all the sun I really was drained of energy. I crashed and ended up oversleeping again about 3 and a half hours. I did not have any muscle soreness however like I thought I would from Muay Thai.

Day 14:
This was pretty discouraging and the next day I had another long day in the sun. During the day I was not overly tired. When it came to the night my phone was dead so I couldn't set my alarm and so was my buddies so I ended up just hoping that I would be able to self regulate in some way. I woke up and was up three times that night but I think i probably spent 75% of the night sleeping. I felt myself turning back around and was afraid how all of this over sleeping was going to affect me in the long run.

Day 15:
I am having trouble falling asleep at my regular naps during the day. I think my body is transitioning into a monophasic pattern again. I started craving sugar again which is yet another sign I am losing my polyphasicness. At night I slept from 1-6 am. My alarms just didn't wake me up. I feel I have transitioned back to a monophasic state completely now. Starting tomorrow I am going to force myself into the everyman schedule with a 2 hour 45 minute core with four twenty minute naps. I choose this time because it was around how long I overslept once and woke up feeling really refreshed so it might be a good length. If not I will adjust it. As well I am doing full gyming this week and Muay Thai.

Friday, 29 June 2012

Day 12: goin fishin

I am starting to realize that I am not making enough use of my time at night. I really need to start actually knocking off major items on my to do list cause right now its starting to feel like wasted time. This won't be happening much over the weekend though because I am going to be joining a buddy up near meadow lake to do some chilling and spear fishing.

This situation will be rather interesting as I will be staying at his place. He does know and supports my sleep schedule but I still don't know how weird it is going to be being awake in someone's house all night.

Today I have been very alert and have had good energy. This is probably because of the long sleep I had yesterday. So far there has not been a crash period but if I were to guess I think it will be tonight. If I can make it through the night the spear fishing should be able to keep me going even if I am sleepy.

The drive up was pretty rough. I only made it part way there in the night. I stopped for 3 naps in one 4 hour period then decided to just stop because I was way too tired. The last nap I overslept by 1 hour.