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
Friday, 3 August 2012
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.
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.
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