Sleep / Training Scheduling & General Fatigue

[Eric Kamhi]

What are your general training / sleep / energy schedules like?

For ex: age, training hrs/week, sleep/night, workout time during the day, general fatigue / energy oscillations?

 

I'm 35.  Train about 6-6.5 hrs per week. And sleep 6-6.5 hours per night on average.  My workouts are at the end of the day between 5-7 pm and finish between 7-9 pm (2 hour workout).  I'm progressing slowly, but happy with the progress I am making.

 

I don't train in the morning because I spend a lot more time warming up, and have much more difficulty in delivering the strength and power I need (or that I deliver later during the day).

 

Currently I get burnt out every 8-10 or so weeks and have to take a week off/or light in order to recuperate as my training quality goes down.

 

On good nights I can sleep 8 hours.  But I almost always wake up tired.  Some weeks If I have an off weekday, I'll end up sleeping 10-12 hours straight as if I'm making up for lost time.  Usually after resting a week, batteries feel replenished and the first 4-6 weeks after staring up a new cycle, I feel stronger every week, fatigue lessens.  But the last weeks, I feel the batteries are drained, weaker and weaker while training, and need more and more sleep.

 

This upward and downward cycle has been there for the last five years that I've been training.  The one thing that's changed is that over the last five years I've been having lesser late night outs with lots of drinking.  I feel that this has helped lessen general fatigue.

 

What are your weeks/moths like?  Are they more steady?  Similar?  And of course, please let us know if you are a fintess professional/athelre or just training for well being.   Part time trainers and full time gym users would not be a very fair comparison.  

[Joshua Slocum]

Age: 23

I train about 13 hours a week (~ 1hr warming up, ~8 skill work, ~2 strength work, ~2 stretching)

Workouts are always 5-7:30pm (sometimes I go over)

I sleep about 7 hours a night, but try to get closer to 8 following strength work.

I've been on a 4-week cycle for about a year. 2 weeks moderate intensity, 1 week heavy intensity, 1 week light intensity. I'm probably going to be rethinking my cycle soon though, as I think a longer one would allow me to make greater gains in between deloading weeks.

[Brendan Coad]

age:27

training hrs/week: 25 hrs/week

sleep/night: 7-8 hr/night (usually interrupted, sometimes 3-4, I have a young child)

workout time: 5 AM - 8 AM. 6 PM - 7 PM (my work schedule changed for the month of December so I get to sleep in now, but this has been my schedule for the past couple of months)

fatigue/energy: Waking up my energy is OK, occasionally good. I use different techniques to try and stay dialed in. 6 PM - 7 PM is mostly a fun session because the energy is pretty low by the end of the day. It mostly involves some very light stretching, rolling around and headstands with my daughter which keeps it fun. This isn't focused training at all, but loosens me up after work and keeps me active. I've started a ballet class once a week in the PM and the structure helps with energy in the PM for more serious work although this is a new addition to my workload so it has been very challenging physically.

In terms of consistency of feeling on a weekly or monthly basis, it is pretty much all over the place. I train using the parameters of a steady state cycle which has been very important for my mental focus given my time constraints. I know exactly what I have to do. I don't worry on a daily basis about learning brand new movement concepts or deciding how hard to push to make it to the new amount of reps for the exercise etc... Week by week I don't need to evaluate what happens if I don't make my rep scheme etc... All my energy is used to focus on the completion of each exercise and technical improvement.

[Mats Trane]

Try to have a deload week every forth week (cut down on volume). Everyone is different but I try to get 8 hours of sleep every night.

I'm 49 and train 5 days a week. On some days twice a day. 1 hour in the morning and 45 minutes at night.