Fried CNS?

[Daniel Cavallari]

Understood, good point. Thank you.

[Randy Scheingold]

I didn't have insomnia, but had trouble staying asleep. Was impacting my lifts and overall quality of life (can't play with the kids....if you are snoozing on the couch). Went to a sleep doctor. No Apnea. Sent me to a sleep therapist...sounded nutty...but I did it. Few tricks I learned, which have actually helped a lot. And reinforce Andy's point above.

1) don't check the time in the middle of the night, you'll only stress yourself out
2) If you aren't able to fall asleep...don't keep trying or you'll get your brain working too hard. Read something relaxing or watch TV until you feel more tired. NO WORK or STRESSFUL stuff though. Even good stress, keep the mental activity low.
3) keep lights low...including using the night time lighting on your phone/tablet. Schedule it...its like Pavlov's dog now....nighttime lighting comes on and I feel more tired.
4) the money one...: stay up later and always wake up the same time. You need to deprive your sleep bank further, so your body forces itself to get more quality sleep. So instead of going to bed at 10:30 and tossing and turning. Stay up until midnight every night for 2 weeks. and wake up at 7am every day (weekends too). Worked like a charm for me.

[Nicky85]

Just to chime in here, similar to what Andy mentioned you may try lifting in the am if you cannot make 5am cardio in the morning. When I switched lifting in the morning my sleep has been improved dramatically. Actually, its so deep I don't hear the baby crying next room, feels like coma no joke - give it a try.

[Maties Hofstede]

There is a difference between frying your CNS from training, and having your CNS go all to shit because you literally aren't sleeping. If you aren't sleeping you cannot do any sort of program that progresses daily or weekly. You won't be able to consistently base this week off last week for example because your sleep pattern is too much of a variable.

You need something that is completely autoregulated. I'd recommend training heavy two days per week, once upper, once lower. On your upper days, go in and hit a top single on the Bench Press or the Press (alternate weekly) just to see where you are at. Then back off to 90% and hit a set of 2-4 reps, then back off to 80% and hit like 3 sets of 4-8 reps. Then do some light version of the other lift and whatever assistance you want. Do the same thing with squats and deads. You can also use variations of the bench, press, squat, or deadlift.

Have you tried 5:00 am cardio for 1 hour, every day? I've given this to many of my clients with supposed "insomnia" and it works like a charm.

Took a newspaper job when I had insomnia and derailed sleep patterns. Gettin up that early defenitly fixes a lot haha. 2hrs LISS and made some xtra cash.