"It's hard for me to fall asleep. I haven't cracked it yet how to do it perfectly. What helps: view the problem as improving your likelihood to sleep. Before I viewed the problem as falling asleep 100% of the time, which is a really defeating view to have when I can't fall asleep."
I did not respond to your sibling comment who speaks of anxiety. It sounds like a real pathology and something I have no business generalizing about.
You, however, mention no such thing so I am emboldened to encourage you to exercise - something not mentioned in your list.
I would experiment with both walking for 2-3 hours (on a day off, presumably) and also a 1.5 to 2 hour intense weightlifting workout (primarily focused on your thighs/legs[1][2], since they are the biggest muscles.
I'm not saying to do these things on the same day, just that they are both good candidates for an exercise activity which could influence your ability to go to sleep.
I like your list - especially getting out in the sun early and setting your circadian rhythms, but your list strikes me as it would somebody putting special air filters in their car when they've never taken it in for an oil change. Only reach for the specialized optimizations when you've exhausted the major factors.
[1] which implies squats and deadlifts, although a real leg press (the kind you load with plates, not select weight from the stack) would also do the trick.
> and also a 1.5 to 2 hour intense weightlifting workout (primarily focused on your thighs/legs[1][2], since they are the biggest muscles.
being nitpicky here but we shouldn't be promoting "time in the gym" as a measurement of a workout's success. frankly, if you're doing an "intense" workout for "2 hours" something's wrong.
"being nitpicky here but we shouldn't be promoting "time in the gym" as a measurement of a workout's success. frankly, if you're doing an "intense" workout for "2 hours" something's wrong."
Some background, and you can adjust to fit your personal situation ...
I am 39 years old and in order to do (relatively) heavy squats and deadlifts I require about 45 minutes of prehab, stretching, warmups and accessory exercises.
I also have 3 kids so I can't do two weight workouts per week.
Therefore, I "lift weights" for two hours each week, the first 45 minutes of which is a fairly intense and comprehensive lead-up to two (yes, just two) sets of squats, followed by the rest of my leg/back exercises, then 15 minutes of upper body prehab/stretching/warmup and 30 mins of actual lifting.
So yeah - 25 and no kids ? By all means, enjoy your hour long workout :)
"Intense" here means lifting weights close to the maximum you can lift for certain number of repetitions. This kind of workout can easily take 1.5 to 2 hours, and IMHO qualifies as intense.
If you are actually following set, repetition and rest period guidelines it should probably take quite a bit less, depending on how many exercises you can fit in. Since I never seem to be able to hit the 30 second rest period between sets, and I can't always get to the machine I want immediately after my last exercise because it's in use, I always seemed to average 10-15 minutes an exercise. I haven't been to the gym in months though. :/
3-5 minute rest periods are not unusual at heavy weights, although I personally try to keep it to two minutes to save time. With warm-up sets and some waiting for equipment I often find myself spending 1.5 hours at the gym. Super setting would help a lot but it's impractical at most gyms :(
That's great advice, but it's a pretty big task for someone who might not get a lot of exercise to do 2 hours of intense weightlifting. I lift regularly, and my gym sessions only take an hour.
The good news is that if you are sedentary, older, or sedentary and older, even a little bit of exercise will be extremely effective. Go for that long walk, or maybe a shorter jog, and do some pushups and un-weighted squats. You'll be exhausted, and you'll be less likely to injure yourself. :)
30 minutes? How come? You take a at least 1.5 minute break between every set. So for 5 sets of first exercise that's 7.5 minutes assuming you don't take longer breaks and that you didn't do any warmup and just went straight for proper weights. Now add exercise itself and it's easily 9 minutes. Times three (again, assuming you don't take longer breaks which is really hard to do when you start hitting heavier weights) and it's 27 minutes. Add warmup and stretching and it's easily around 40 minutes. I think my fastest stronglift session was around 50-60 minutes. The longest was easily over 2 hours. When I started hitting squats with weights around 1.4 my body mass just warmups and proper sets were 50 minutes in itself. That was about 11 sets of squats with some breaks being 3-5 minutes ones.
I think six sets of warmup (for your 11 sets) are a bit too many. Three should be enough, and you don't need a real break between warmup sets. That should help cut down. Mehdi even recommends skipping breaks when switching exercises. Indeed, with 1.4 BW it will be tough. But that's what deweighs are for, and at that level, you'll be going into 3x5 soon.
Stronglifts is amazingly high impact for the time it takes.
If you didn't take a look at stronglifts, you should give a try.
Actually, it's only one of a few beginner strength training (most focused to powerlifting, but you can mix with BB if you want to) available out there. I started lifting with stronglifts, today I do greyskull LP.
Also on the weight lifting / sleep connection, in 4 hr Body, Time Ferris states:
TAX THE NERVOUS SYSTEM WITH ISO-LATERAL MOVEMENTS. Exercise is commonly recommended to improve sleep. The problem for me was that results were unpredictable. I might exercise for 20 minutes and fall asleep in 10 minutes, or I might exercise for two hours and fall asleep in two hours. There was no repeatable cause and effect. It seemed like a coin toss. This changed when I began to incorporate iso-lateral (one-arm or one-leg) resistance training. I logged faster to-sleep times after 8 out of 10 training sessions. The more complex the stabilization required, the shorter the to-sleep time.
This is really interesting, I have hard time dealing with sleep since moving abroad, break-up, far from family, isolated small city. Before I could bet with someone that I can fall asleep in less that 5 minutes.
Now, I've done it all and nothing seem to help:
- tried medicine(benzodiazepam family, ugly stuff, addictive, stopped after just 1 week, fuck the doctor that prescribed this)
- tried removing everything with a lot of caffeine, everything in the vegetable world has it, impossible to eliminate, but no more: coffee, tea, sugary drinks
- adapter water drinking to maximum needed
- running 15 minutes HIIT style(4 minutes at 12.5 km/h, 1 minute 16 km/h, repeat)
- weightlifting for the rest 45 minutes - every day session
- meditation (stoping the mind, have a single thought, mandalas, matras, yantras ...)
- no lcd, led light before 23:00, no more tv before bed
- went back to the doctor, best clinic for this in Europe... got prescribed mirtazapine, anti-depresant, helps but the side effects are weired and dehumanizing(taking 1/4 of 30 mg pill, far below the reference amount that they say it has any effect)
- sleep settled to 5 h / d, not bad, but not perfect
- mirtazapine gave me a very long face in the morning, looking destroyed, feeling rested and calm, but face dropped, looking like droopy dog
- went back to doctor, started CBT, bought books on CBT, personal opinion: pile of crap(and I was very opened to them)
- f**k the doctor again(I trust doctors, not this one), he asked me money and go to have treatment at home, told me I am normal, not like the people in the waiting room
- tried melantonin, calming teas, etc etc, bullshit, money wates
- made a girlfriend, sex helps, but when you have it until 03:00 AM due to "crazy" girlfriend, prefer the pills
- broke up, back to 5 h sleep
- back to doctor
- recommended me THC, a liquid version, helped a bit but too expensive
- started smoking weed, cheaper, fuck lungs, need to sleep
- helped a lot for the first months until I became addicted without noticing(addiction is not easy to describe, that is why everybody seems to share a different opinion, bullshit, you become addicted of smoking to be normal, not for the high)
- had to unlearn the weed, waves of heat and cold and sleepless nights followed, catastrophic, need my freedom back, even with 4-5 h of sleep, don't want to depend on anything foreign of my body
- went back home, slept like a rock for the first days, next days awful, unstoppable mind
- back to computer programming until I get tired
- back to reading books until I collapse into sleep
- I collapse but then I wake up at 03:00 am if I start sleeping at 01:00
- change bed place/orientation(mythology of European people), helped a bit, but don't know if it is real or wishful thinking
Effects(personal) of lack of sleep over cognition:
- my mind still solves complex problems(I am a programmer), but the speed lacks to be desired
- entering the zone is almost impossible
- my hands feel like they have 3 tons when I lift them from desk
- I still love what I am doing
- If I find a challenge that is impossible to solve in one day work I get a bad mood
- bad mood gets solved upon second day
Even with all these, I still love life at maximum, would want to achieve and do more, but not whatever the costs, not becoming addicted of foreign stuff!
Guys, be grateful for your lives and go out and speak with people, one day this magic substance might be found, but I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
Melatonin, while not effective for everyone, should not be grouped together with "bullshit money wastes" in my opinion.
> Guys, be grateful for your lives and go out and speak with people, one day this magic substance might be found, but I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
This is a very positive outlook, but bear in mind how reality changes for people who are deprived of sleep. As I'm sure you know it becomes a state of desperation. So while you may not want foreign stuff / substances in your body, others are definitely willing to make the sacrifice, even if that doesn't mean good sleep indefinitely. Other people may be willing to be dependent on substances in order to feel rested, for example. Myself included.
> I am more convinced that it will come from machine/human merger that from substances. Good or bad, that is the most likely future.
Curious, what kind of machine/human concept are you thinking of?
You have 3.5-5 hours a day to work out? I want your job. Also, as a former competitive weightlifter, if you are lifting intense for 1.5-2 hours, you are doing it wrong.
You missed part of the post - I wasn't suggesting doing both in a day, I was suggesting that each of them was a good candidate to try in a day.
Also, see my follow-up comment about lifting for 2 hours. tl;dr is that I'm 39 and it takes 45 mins just to prehab/stretch/warmup for heavy squats. YMMV.
Hmm... exercise does indeed reduce the chance. I exercise a little bit. Unfortunately, I can't notice how it is affecting my sleep, but it probably is affecting my sleep. So it should be on the list.
I did not respond to your sibling comment who speaks of anxiety. It sounds like a real pathology and something I have no business generalizing about.
You, however, mention no such thing so I am emboldened to encourage you to exercise - something not mentioned in your list.
I would experiment with both walking for 2-3 hours (on a day off, presumably) and also a 1.5 to 2 hour intense weightlifting workout (primarily focused on your thighs/legs[1][2], since they are the biggest muscles.
I'm not saying to do these things on the same day, just that they are both good candidates for an exercise activity which could influence your ability to go to sleep.
I like your list - especially getting out in the sun early and setting your circadian rhythms, but your list strikes me as it would somebody putting special air filters in their car when they've never taken it in for an oil change. Only reach for the specialized optimizations when you've exhausted the major factors.
[1] which implies squats and deadlifts, although a real leg press (the kind you load with plates, not select weight from the stack) would also do the trick.