_jaap_ said:
your body actually needs prolonged periods of quality sleep to recover from the micro cellular damage you inflict on it through training. So i would advice you to try to cut out the naps and get some good sleep at night. Should be a hella lot better for yer social life too i think
I actually don't believe the body needs sleep to repair muscle. I believe sleep is more for the brain which can't otherwise be as inactive. Either way I agree upon its importance in bodybuilding.
I think the longer sleeping cycles are more effective being that during sleep we naturally pass in and out of several states and its believed that in the deepest state is when pathways are being repaired/restructured in the brain. if say the duration for a complete cycle was 40mintutes. If you sleep in 3 hour chunks you would fit in 4 complete cycles each time. sleep that way for 9 hours (3 hours 3 times a day) and you get 12 cycles.
Now sleep 9 hours straight, and you get 13 cycles.
The numbers I chose didn't put much of a gap, 12-13 cycles, but I've no idea what the average cycles time is and I'm sure it varies from person to person. grabbing a quick 30minute nap usually gives people energy whereas 1hr people seem dead trying to wake up, mabe the cycles are longer, and the 1hr people are in pretty deep and thats why they feel dead. who knows.
I just feel its is better to get the sleep ina chunk and mabe a light nap if you need it, I don't feel it has much effect on muscle growth unless the sleep/or lack ther of is effecting you negatively in other ways. Lack of sleep does seem to make you more suseptible to infections, as a study has shown that rats kept awake will die in around 13 days from seemingly no other cause but infection. They did lose weight but it was noted that it was probably a result of the infection.
Can't grow to well if you body is busy fighting off colds.
The lack of sleep isn't verywell understood yet, and the only studies I remember reading regarding frequency and time all indicated an average of 8 hours sleep for maximum alertness and suggested that contininual unbroken sleep was optimal.
I also remeber reading somethig about sleep debt and how the evidence of sleep deprivation can be seen in individuals who have been resting correctly for for a few weeks, when they have previously had a lack of sleep. One suggested that sleep debt can be acculmulated for possibly even a year. Meaning that you can't simply catch up w/ a few nights good sleep (though you will feel alot better). Unfortunatly there was no indication there is such thing as a sleep bank.