Sleep and muscle development

(G. Andrew Duthie) #1

I’d like to hear what others have experienced with respect to muscle development and need for sleep.

More specifically, I know that our bodies need sleep in order to support proper muscle development, but I’m curious if anyone has experienced a need for additional sleep above and beyond what you would normally consider your baseline.

That is, if you would normally sleep 7-8 hours a night as your “right” amount of sleep, do you tend to need more than that when doing regular resistance exercise?

I started StrongLifts 5x5 a couple of weeks ago, and I am finding that even if I get what I would usually consider an adequate amount of sleep, I end up feeling tired and more prone to soreness than if I sleep more than I usually would.

Not clear to me if this is because I’m starting something new, because perhaps I’m under the weather, or just because if I’m asking my body to build muscle that I need to provide it more downtime to do so.

I welcome feedback on this, especially from your n=1 experience.

(Richard Morris) #2

We build muscle as we repair the microtears we make in the fibres when we hold the muscle under load. We do most of that repair while sleeping. So it makes sense to be more tired when you work out.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #3

Yeah…intuitively it makes sense. I was just wondering if my experience was consistent with that of others.

After all, sometimes what we think intuitively turns out not to be the reality. :slight_smile:

(Stickin' with mammoth) #4

Lemme dig back into 24 years of weightlifting experience and give you my considered opinion…

No.

If anything, my friends and I slept harder and less during regular lifting. Dudes I lifted with ran the gamut from power lifters to professional bodybuilders to athletes training for the Olympics in the off season so, needless to say, I picked up a lot of good advice around the free weights rack (and learned what an effed up life body builders live, hoo-boy). It was only when we all crept into overtraining that we had to do more to recover. This was where a lot of (men mostly) tried to game the system with T, steroids, supplements, cold therapy–anything and everything to secure a fast recovery so they could get back in the weight room. That whole Faster/Harder/Better stuff really had a hold on them. Few bothered to get to know their body and game it.

Most of the regulars were savvy enough to discard the No Pain, No Gain crap and realized it was just working harder, not smarter. The rest judged themselves by the size of their dumbbells. You know what I mean. It was the older guys I liked to listen to, they’d seen it all and tried it all and had the injuries to prove it. The most ubiquitous instruction I got from them was: “Patience.” Sounds a lot like going keto.

So, take it from someone who’s seen it all and tried it all and has the injuries to prove it: Scale back and give yourself more time to reach your lifting goals. The whole point is to feel good. Really. I know society gives out points for struggle and suffering but society is full of shit.

Now you got me thinking about one of my favorite characters among the meatheads. 75-years-old and still doing upside down pull ups on the rack, Joe was sunny, encouraging, and had a sparkle in his eye that could light a fire. He was one of the original founders of the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon back in the 70s and had done a non-motorized circumnavigation of the globe in his 50s. His stories about the dogsled turning over in Alaska and swimming between Big Diomede and Little Diomede had me on the edge of my seat. His philosophy? Keep going.

(eat more) #5

in my experience you’ll get over the “hump”…usually 2-3 weeks and your body will realize this is the new normal and not a crisis.

you’re placing higher demands on your body than it’s used to and it’s trying to protect you…cute mama bear body :blush:

requirements for muscle development = water, sleep, nutrients…all of equal importance.
i’ve heard that professional competitive bodybuilders take a LOT of naps…i sort of want a job that requires me to nap :joy:

(G. Andrew Duthie) #6

Appreciate the responses so far…and hoping to hear more folks chime in.

One thing I’ve done to protect myself from over-training is that I decided that I don’t need to be doing HIIT on the days that I’m not lifting. I’d originally thought to add both at once, and I realize that’s probably not a good idea. Pretty clear that my body needs to adjust to the lifting, even though it’s not a huge amount of weight yet.

So right now, I’m doing SL 5x5 3x a week with a day off in between, and two days off between weeks.

(Stickin' with mammoth) #7

Whoa, that sentence alone should give you pause. Grow days are just that: grow days. Know how your computer runs slower when you’ve got too many programs running? Rest is NOT a four-letter word.

(eat more) #8

but more than “before” :blush:

(G. Andrew Duthie) #9

Yes, exactly. Much like in programming, trying to do too much all at once can be a recipe for failure.

Which is why I’m NOT doing that anymore. :wink:

(Stickin' with mammoth) #10

Fantastic! Hey, if you want to still “do” something on rest days, stretching and Visual Motor Behavior Rehearsal will give you superpowers. I’ve been researching and experimenting with VMBR, neuroplasticity, and how the mind affects the body for over a decade. The answer: It sure as fuck works, and much, MUCH more than anybody thinks, pardon the pun.

Note: One of my own experiments with it was to improve my vision. I went from a -4.75 contact lens prescription to a -2.25 without drugs, eye exercises, carrots, or goat sacrifices to Kali, and it’s still improving. Suck on THAT, Kaiser Permanente! The rest of my family wears Coke-bottle bottom lenses, neener, neener.

(Jamie Hayes) #11

Andrew,

What time of day are you doing your Strong Lifts 5X5?

(G. Andrew Duthie) #12

I’m trying to do early in the morning, but on some mornings I just can’t get there, so I’ll do it usually early afternoon at that point. The exception is Saturdays. On Saturdays, I usually play ultimate Frisbee with my kids and their youth group, which is basically 2 hours of running and throwing. On Saturdays, I do SL 5x5 after we get home, usually somewhere around 1:30pm or so.

So it’s either in the pre-8am timeframe, or early afternoon.

(Jamie Hayes) #13

Well it would be interesting to keep a log to see if the time of your workout had any relationship to the quality of your sleep. N=1

I suspect, as long as you’re not working out late, t won’t make any difference.

#14

In the thread below, @devhammer talks about having a FitBit Charge 2 that automatically detects sleep, and the FitBit app also allows for the date and time of workouts to be logged, so it should be possible to correlate the time of the workout to sleep quality.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #15

Interesting idea.

I’m not convinced that the Fitbit is terribly accurate in terms of measuring sleep quality (for that matter, it seems to think I’m asleep when I’m sitting still reading, too). But for a very rough correlation it could work.

#16

I’ve had the same experience where the FitBit inappropriately identifies periods of low physical activity as sleep, but I just delete those events from the sleep log. Otherwise, I find that when it registers a lot of movement during the night it does correlate to subjectively feeling like I didn’t sleep very well.

The FitBit just uses the accelerometer to track how much you’re moving and in general deeper sleep means less movement, but the only device that actually tracked brain waves was the Zeo and that went out of business years ago and has not been replaced by something available to consumers.

Agreed, it’s just better than pure subjectivity.

If you’re really looking to hack your recovery period, I’d recommend getting something like the Polar H7 cheststrap and an app like EliteHRV to track Heart Rate Variability (HRV) which is much more reliable when determining adequate periods of rest after exercise. You can’t compare one person’s HRV to another’s but tracking changes in your own HRV over time is pretty reliable since sleep and exercise affect HRV.

There’s more to HRV than just a few sentences describing it, but in general it shows the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and periods of stress such as exercise, insufficient sleep, etc. show a more regular R-R interval and sympathetic dominance and recovery periods show a more dominant parasympathetic response, so monitoring HRV should show alternating periods of sympathetic and then parasympathetic dominance and exercising before transitioning out of the parasympathetic recovery period is indicative of overtraining.

(Alex Dipego) #17

I try to sleep at least 6hrs after lifting days, but I also fast through the day before and lift fasted. I’ll slam a meal 1hr after then a high fat snack before bed. I do this and it works for me to the point where if I don’t get morning wood (serious here) I know I missed something. I want my test levels flourishing after a lift because it tells me I’m anabolic. Anecdotal yes but I’ve visually gotten stronger as well as physically.

(Sascha Heid) #18

Stronglifts is very tough, by design it forces you to do the most weight you can handle. You dont want to fail but you dont want to lift even more the next time either.
Thats why you want to sleep more - because you are scared of your next workout and want to hide in your bed.

(G. Andrew Duthie) #19

LOL. Now there’s a novel theory… :slight_smile: