Bad Sleep and Recovery

[Danny Yarbrough]

Hi Coaches!

This has been on my mind for long, but I haven't seen it answered anywhere yet:

To recover from a workout, you (amongst other things) need 2 good nights of sleep - so about 15 hours. But if someone only gets 5 hours of sleep per night, and he isn't able to fix this - would Linear Progression still work if he waited 3 nights before training again instead of 2?
5+5+5 = 15, quick maths, so he would also have gotten 15 hours of sleep in.

I know this gets fishy when talking about the presses, but at least for the squat: Would this approach work? Or is there something inherently important about the ~8 hours of sleep per night (as opposed to just being a matter of sums)?

Of course I'm asking this because I'm a bit affected by it. Sleep just is aweful sometimes, and it seems I can't control it as much as I would. Sometimes I sleep enough, but I *cannot rely* on that. Its not an exception that I get no more than 5 hours of sleep in. So I'm thinking about how to deal with this. Just wait longer until squatting heavy again? Or is it safe to assume that with only 5 hours of sleep after a heavy squat, there will be no progress at all and I have to redo the same weight - until I get my 8 hours in?

Thanks for the opportunity to ask you guys questions!

Best regards,
Philipp

[Tom Campitelli]

I don't know that everyone must get a certain number of hours of sleep before the next training session, lest disaster occurs. However, if sleep is consistently compromised and you are actually working to manipulate the variables under your control to get more quantity and quality of sleep, then your programming will probably need to reflect that. Probably by putting in a light day. Be aware that sometimes you can feel badly and lift well, too. Human performance is not just A+B=C. However, if you are seriously underslept and your warmups are crushing you, take a light day. Better to squat lighter than not squat at all.

[Danny Yarbrough]

Yes, I kind of over-simplified the recovery model to get my point accross. Not sure if it worked.

So you are saying its better to do a light day instead of making bigger session intervals?
Ha! Gotcha.

I will implement this, thanks a lot Tom!

BR,
Philipp

[Tom Campitelli]

Yeah. I would not train less frequently, but would modify the load if necessary. That can be a bit of a slippery slope since most people, myself included, won't necessarily feel "ready" to go up in weight, but it often works out just fine. There will be some experimentation for you to do here.