Hi, I’m a new member and I’ve recently started getting into bodybuilding. My biggest issue is with my sleep, because some nights I just can’t fall asleep. Other nights, when I do sleep I usually get 4-5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. My mom has the same sleep patterns…maybe it’s genetic. Often times, getting 5 hours of sleep is good enough for me to feel awake and pretty alert. Although, I do tend to feel my best with around 7-8 hours of sleep.
What’s pissing me off is when I go to the gym and have a really good workout and then come home and can’t sleep. I feel as if I’m not getting the full value of my workout, because I can’t properly rest my body. At times I get frustrated and wonder if I should even be putting in all the effort if I’m not going to be making gains, because of my sleep. Any advice?
Try training in the morning. If you train right before you try and go to sleep you will likely be in sympathetic dominance for a while. this means that your fight of flight system, triggered by training, is still working while you are trying to sleep.
I have the same problem training MMA late at night. Some good chamomile tea or other sleepy time mixture can really knock you out.
So train earlier than you do and you should sleep like a dead baby.
I used to have the exact same problem my friend, know how I solved it!?
Started going to gym earlier!!
If you go to the gym, come home, eat then go to bed your head is still ‘buzzing’ from the training, and whilst your lying there in bed with non stop thoughts going through your head you can only imagine your stress levels rising due to the frustration about not being able to sleep, which in turn will raise cortisol levels before you enter sleep a catabloic state…bad news for the gains.
Try this anyway and I guarantee you’ll save a few dolla on supplements and after a couple of weeks your sleep will be back to normal!
I have noticed that days where I weight lift I have trouble sleeping. I do my workout from 6:00 to 6:45 pm. After that I go home and eat. I have chamomile almost every night (some nights I have ginger tea), but I don’t think it helps me much.
Last Friday I had a good weight lifting workout and built up a good sweat, but I didn’t sleep at all that night. I had trouble sleep the next two nights also. Monday I went to a basketball game, ate pizza, beer and ice cream (I know, I know…:P), came home and was dead tired from all the food and lack of sleep. I slept a good 7 hours that night.
But Christ, I eat like a pig and sleep well, but when I do the “healthy” stuff I can’t sleep. It seems backwards. Anyway, I want to get my sleeping situation under control first before I get serious about lifting, because this lack of sleep is stressing me out and affecting my energy levels (obviously).
I always felt that cardio should be done in the morning and weight lifting in the afternoon. I guess I have no choice. But yeah, the few times I did workout in the morning remembered sleeping a bit better at night. Maybe that’s the trick…I’ll see how things go.
Mind you, my sleep has never been “normal”…I seem to be a light sleeper. I wonder if you can still make good gains without a lot of sleep.
Try getting to the gym between 10 and 12! and maybe look at using ZMA too if you naturally are a light sleeper…I only started using this stuff a week ago, not only has my sleeping improved dramatically but I’d probably see it as being just as important as fish oils (a personal opinion), give it a try!
I did my workout today at 8 am. My plan is to do it right before work. I’ve never done weightlifting that early in the morning. Today was just some cardio. Anyway, we’ll see how it goes.
Thumbs up on the ZMA, that’s what I’d suggest. It won’t help you get to sleep, per se, but once you’re asleep it’s a better ‘quality’ of rest.
That said, I’ve done the night-time lifting almost exclusively for the past 3 years and, to me, the key is giving yourself a solid hour of ‘nothing’. If you’re in the gym till 6:30, home at 7, cooking then eating till 7:30, on the phone till 8, on the computer till 9, doing work/studying till 10 then bed time, you’re not allowing your body to naturally slow down.
I’ll usually get home around 7-7:30, cook dinner and eat right after that, and I’m zoned out–usually ‘watching’ whatever’s on tv at the moment–until abut 9:30. For me, it’s just the act of fully relaxing after a pretty long day (up at 6:30am, home at 7:30pm) that allows me to fall asleep pretty fast.
And one last thing: when you do have trouble falling asleep, DO NOT let yourself get worked up about it. I used to count down the minutes, thinking about how tired I’d be the next day with such little sleep. At this point, though, I know I can function on little to no sleep so I just keep myself calm, remember that I’ll get a great night’s sleep the next day, and not worry about it.
I have started to experience the same thing since I began lifting weights several weeks ago. I don’t have a problem falling asleep per se but I’ve started waking up at 8 or 8:30 without an alarm clocked, even on weekends.
The worst part is that I feel that I didn’t rest enough when I wake up, and then I get tired much sooner in the evenings and can’t stay up and do important things like study
grilw, I have the same problem…if I can get to sleep I always wake up after about 4-5 hours with no alarm clock. I stopped lifting to see if this problem would go away.
I have a new question…should I workout less because I don’t sleep well? Meaning, I need more time to rest. I was thinking that maybe I should lift two times a week…one day upper and the other lower. What are your thoughts? Also, what’s a good upper/lower workout? Thanks.
I feel your pain, as I have the same problems with sleep. I’ve tried all sorts of sups from melitonin (not the topical though), kava kava, magnesium, etc. Some calcium magnesium zinc caps work a little. Personally I got feed up with with wasting my money on sups.
I go the pharmaceutical route and take ambien and OTC sleeping pills. I’ve been taking them for over 3 years and its a Godsend! My life is so much better because of it. No more tossing and turning in bed for hours every night.
Not sleeping and waking up with a rapid heart beat is a sign of an overtrained nervous system. This can happen if your going to failure every set and your just working out too much. Take a week off every so often. Train your muscles don’t annihilate them. Every time I do I notice my sleep improves. The older I get the more I need to do this.
Thanks to the brain booster thread, I’ve found Phenibut helps me chill at the end of a rough day. It’s especially nice listening to music or reading a book. However tolerance builds up so you can’t take it all the time
I have trouble getting to sleep as well, but it’s mostly due to an overactive mental state. I tend to think about everything that I have to do the next day. Few tips:
-make a list of tasks or things you’re worried about, you can take care of them tomorrow
-go to bed at the same time each night
-get into some sort of ritual each night, brush teeth, read before bed, etc.
-avoid things that wake your mind up. For instance, I can’t listen to music before or while trying to sleep; it wakes me up and makes me focus on what’s going on in the piece/song/whatever.
-I try to avoid any form of stimulant after noon. Seems to help.
-I also train at 11am each time I go, which is going a helluva lot better than last semester when I trained at night.
The worst part about this kind of thing is that you feel great on 4-5 hours, and you can function. It adds up after a while, then you crash hard for one or two nights–which is no good.
Also, if you’re going to drop to two training sessions a week, why not go with two full body sessions? Here’s an article I dug up with such a program: http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=1475469
Give yourself a couple of hours two wind down in the evening, thats pretty important, I work till half 9 at night sometimes and I can only get to sleep at about 12 them nights! But ever since I’ve been using ZMA my quality if sleep has been amazing!
On the training front, I wouldn’t cut back on the training, just try get to the gym in the morning twice a week and if your not working weekenda and dont like getting up that early to train just save two workouts for Saturday and Sunday etc.
