Recovery question

[Poser]

Let's say after a hard couple of days of training, you're feeling entirely smoked and you go to bed (fully hydrated and loaded on protein) with the intentions of getting 9-10 hours of sleep as you are sure your body needs the recovery. You fall asleep easily. You get up in the middle of the night to take a piss, drink another glass of water. Now, let's say you wake up after 7.5 hours of sleep and, despite still feeling smoked and sore and like you need more sleep, you are unable to go back to sleep, though perfectly content to lounge in bed in a "near sleep" state with no motivation to get out of bed. At that point, are you actually getting much benefit from rest, or are you better off just getting up and eating breakfast?

 

[Brock A]

Sounds like a question for a Doctor but I know for me, 6 to 7 hours a night regardless of my activities during the day. Anything after that I don't feel like I am benefiting from it. I may be 100% incorrect also.

 

[jm1607]

I think you're main "rest" and recovery comes from REM sleep.. Resting/recovering by lounging around staring at the ceiling is good too because you aren't using your muscles and giving them time to rest/recover, but I don't think it nearly compares to quality/deep sleep

Just my 2 cents, I'm not a doctor though lol

 

[PA 5-0]

Not a doctor or an Ironman Triathlete, but I do train and study about training a lot. First, resting in bed is resting, not recovery. As stated above, REM sleep is recovery time. I do a most of my cardio work on my road bike, with some road racing and mntn biking mixed in. Just as an example, most PRO bike riders require at least 10hrs of sleep a night. When reading up on some of these guys, some can do it easily(sleep 10hrs) and some have to force themselves to do it. When reading up on hard core training programs and trainers, the metric most missed is sleep time. One of the top Tri/cycling trainers in the world recently printed that the first thing he does with 90% of his new clients is reduce their training hours and increase their sleep hours. That should tell us something.
Good luck, Dan

 

[MissHighcountry_Hellrazor]

Rem sleep is the only type of "rest" that will allow your muscles/ body to rejuvenate bc when in this state most of your voluntary muscles are paralyzed (temporarily) allowing your body to repair torn muscle fibers, repair skeletal fibers etc from working out etc. it takes about 90 minutes to actually reach this point in the 4 phase sleep pattern (w REM being the last of the 4). Therefore if you have to be up within 90 min, might as well just get up and eat a carb rich breakfast to give you the energy you need that your not going to get from sleep. If you have plenty of time, w no distractions and in a dark room try breathing in deep breaths while letting them out slowly. Usually by the 6-7th time, most ppl begin falling to sleep.

Info from a sleep specialist. (Yep, they have those)

M.