General fitness

Has anyone tried polyphasic or biphasic sleep? Does it work better?

I first read about it a few years ago from some young guy (sounds like a computer guy who works at home) who was training himself to get more hours of the day playing around with sleep cycles and your circadian rhythm. Lately I've been reading that Cristiano Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski use it. Anyone who knows anything about Ronaldo knows the guy is a fitness freak.

It would have been neat to try during the lockdown days but I also drink alcohol so I doubt it would work for me.

On the contrary I read Tom Brady is in bed for 9 hours but it's one sleep period.
 
Fwiffo said:
Has anyone tried polyphasic or biphasic sleep? Does it work better?

I first read about it a few years ago from some young guy (sounds like a computer guy who works at home) who was training himself to get more hours of the day playing around with sleep cycles and your circadian rhythm. Lately I've been reading that Cristiano Ronaldo and Robert Lewandowski use it. Anyone who knows anything about Ronaldo knows the guy is a fitness freak.

It would have been neat to try during the lockdown days but I also drink alcohol so I doubt it would work for me.

On the contrary I read Tom Brady is in bed for 9 hours but it's one sleep period.
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I did. When I was young enough (and stupid enough)! - biphasic sleep of sorts.Not Polyphasic sleep, that's for eejits.

As for what these celebs claim. I would take it with a pinch of salt. For e.g Lewadowski is famous for his backwards eating diet which basically involves eating his dessert first (which he eats daily).
You really need to read Amazon product ASIN 0141983760.

Sleep is something you really shouldn't be fucking about with too much.

PS

Messi and LeBron (and Brady) are known for sleeping over 10 hours a night and close to 12 hours a day
 
That is a LOT of sleep!

Somewhat related, my wife is always on the kids’ cases about getting enough sleep. She firmly believes and tells them that if they don’t sleep for 10yrs a night they won’t reach their full height potential. I haven’t looked at the studies, but I’m very skeptical of this threat.
 
Dropbear said:
That is a LOT of sleep!

Somewhat related, my wife is always on the kids’ cases about getting enough sleep. She firmly believes and tells them that if they don’t sleep for 10yrs a night they won’t reach their full height potential. I haven’t looked at the studies, but I’m very skeptical of this threat.
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I am with my wife on this. Correlation does not equal causation off but growth hormone is normally released during sleep. If someone is consistently sleep deprived, growth hormone is also suppressed. And poor sleep also affects regulation of other hormones.
 
QuandoDio said:
I am with my wife on this. Correlation does not equal causation off but growth hormone is normally released during sleep. If someone is consistently sleep deprived, growth hormone is also suppressed. And poor sleep also affects regulation of other hormones.
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I can see that in kids who are genuinely, systematically deprived of sleep throughout their childhoods. Like kids raise in conflict areas where they are bombed overnight or have to stay on the move day and night. Though even then the difference can’t be that great or we would see it in some generations in different areas of the globe.

I figure the body is pretty good at self-regulating - we get tired when we need sleep. My wife is nagging my son for staying up a half hour too long or waking up an hour early on weekends because he just isn’t tired - telling him he will be a midget without that extra essential sleep.
 
I continue to add muscle, but weight/ body fat remains the same. I’ve upped the protein and still working on keeping carbs under 50g (milk and cheese are hurting me there, though). Not counting calories, but I think I’m doing ok there. It’s not like I want to lose a lot of fat - just 5-10 pound - but I’m just not getting anywhere. In a couple more months I will be Schwartzenager with a little belly!
 
^^Didn't you just start upping the ante less than a month ago?
Body adaptations take longer than that? IME, a few months or so

I mean, if you really want to do the chick 'drop ten pounds in a month schtick', then I'd skip the milk and cheese (my weakness too) for a while and up the cardio. It helps lean out.

You don't have to go crazy on the treadmill - just up the step count.
 
True, I haven’t given it much time. I’ve decades of experience with toning and adding muscle, but this is the first time in my (slim) life I’ve ever needed to cut fat. It’s a lot harder than adding muscle!
 
I have read that Fr. Francis Hugh Maycock--the head of Pusey House, Oxford, and the priest who prepared me for baptism and confirmation in the Church of England--was supposed to have slept 17 out of the 24 hours in the day. One might think that much slumber would be a Fountain of Youth, but he looked pretty old and decrepit to me, even though he was only in his early 60s. However, when you're 21, I suppose everybody in his early 60s looks old and decrepit. Nowadays, people in their early 60s seem positively youthful to me, some of the women downright alluring!
 
Dropbear said:
I continue to add muscle, but weight/ body fat remains the same. I’ve upped the protein and still working on keeping carbs under 50g (milk and cheese are hurting me there, though). Not counting calories, but I think I’m doing ok there. It’s not like I want to lose a lot of fat - just 5-10 pound - but I’m just not getting anywhere. In a couple more months I will be Schwartzenager with a little belly!
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Ozempic
 
I just learned that the United States Air Force has initiated some new unisex strength tests: You have to be able to dead lift at a minimum 40 pounds [sic!]. Maximum is variously reported as 100 or 110 pounds. What kind of sissy nation are we becoming? I realize the USAF is not the USMC...but still! I make no claims to being exceptionally strong, even for my age group (to paraphrase Clint Eastwood, "Old guy strong ain't strong enough!"). Nonetheless, while checking this out, I found that I could pick up and carry for some distance a kettlebell weighing the minimum 40 pounds with only my middle finger. On occasion, I have recently performed farmer's carries with my 70- and 75-pound kettlebells without undue strain. I'm sure the USAF is not interested in recruiting guys in their early 80s, even though I am equally sure there are some old boys in my "cohort group" who are much stronger than I am!
 
Jan Libourel said:
Nonetheless, while checking this out, I found that I could pick up and carry for some distance a kettlebell weighing the minimum 40 pounds with only my middle finger. On occasion, I have recently performed farmer's carries with my 70- and 75-pound kettlebells without undue strain. I'm sure the USAF is not interested in recruiting guys in their early 80s, even though I am equally sure there are some old boys in my "cohort group" who are much stronger than I am!
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Given 63 year olds are now serving in the Ukrainian army when the draft is between ages 18-60 you never know what acute situations will bring.
 
I’ve been taking this for about fourth months, along with a good Vitamin C and a basic multivitamin. I think it’s work the money. The energy I get and workout recovery rate is real.

IMG_2337.webp
 
My resting heart rate is 58 today. That’s kind of scary.
 
QuandoDio said:
Scar good or scary bad?
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Scary good.

All my life I delude myself I had a 60 pulse but really every 15 seconds I had an extra beat or two so I was regularly in the mid 60s (~66). At my age I didn't expect to be able to improve myself. My family (both sides) have heart issues too.
 
In a slightly different reality, I might find her alluring, but then my wife trains with all those things, so I guess I'll stick with her.
 
Tire Slams: Bashing a tire with a sledgehammer, a dedicated exercise hammer or mace has been a staple among devotees of "functional" or unconventional fitness for a couple of decades now. I hadn't performed this exercise for a spell, so I thought I'd give it a try. Well, I didn't want to overdo it, so I performed 250 slams with my lighter (12-pound) sledge. I figured that by the next morning I would be feeling that good muscle soreness that comes from performing an infrequently used exercise. Well, the next morning dawned, and what did I feel...nothing, NOTHING (as my vicious second ex-wife used to say)! This leads me to the conclusion that tire slams are kind of a "nothing" exercise. I have lately been corresponding with Dr. Conor Heffernan at the University of Belfast, an eminent authority on Indian clubs and the history of physical training and strength sports in general. He told me that he considered tire bashing to be of limited or negligible utility and that it had arisen among devotees of "functional fitness" early in the present century. As I think I have remarked before in this thread, I have never quite been able to discern what the distinction is between "functional" strength and fitness, and any other kind. Is there such a thing as "dysfunctional fitness"? One thing I have noticed in these slamming videos is that women will quite commonly use the side of the hammer head to bash the tire. I could never see the point of that, and neither could Doc Heffernan. I have never been able to see the point in buying expensive "exercise hammers" in preference to the conventional sledges you get at hardware stores.
 
www.theglobeandmail.com

Workout variety and fueling up can help avoid muscle shrinkage, study shows

The finding sheds new light on what triggers muscle growth, why you need adequate fuel and how to exercise to avoid robbing your triceps to pay your biceps
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

That article is basically a digest of this: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/...ce_for_simultaneous_muscle_atrophy_and.9.aspx

"One school of thought is that strength training boosts levels of muscle-building hormones, such as testosterone, circulating throughout the body, which would imply that even non-targeted muscles should grow. That theory has fallen out of favour, and the new results add further evidence that hormones aren’t what drive the benefits of strength training.

Still, you might hope that nothing at all would happen to the non-targeted muscles. But muscles are never static, Derave points out. On any given day, about 2 per cent of your muscle is being broken down into its constituent amino acids and then repaired with new building blocks, which means that your entire body is being remodelled every two months or so.

What seems to have happened with the subjects who consumed less food is that there weren’t enough amino acids to go around, so some were reallocated from the breakdown of non-targeted muscles to support the growth of targeted ones."

"There are two key takeaways from the study. One is that you need to fuel your workouts properly, or else gains in one part of body will come at the expense of other parts. It’s not clear from the results whether the key is getting sufficient calories or getting sufficient protein. Derave suspects the former, as long you’re above a minimum of about 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, which is close to the average consumption for Canadian adults.

The other takeaway is that diverse workout routines have an advantage over repetitive ones, and multijoint exercises trump single-muscle isolation moves. In other words, there’s no free lunch: The only muscles that get fitter are the ones you use."

Sort of like pruning your plants to make them grow more.
 
Has anyone here done a dexascan or 3D body mapping with ultrasound to look at body fat analysis...whether your left thigh is bigger than your right..
 
Fwiffo said:
Has anyone here done a dexascan or 3D body mapping with ultrasound to look at body fat analysis...whether your left thigh is bigger than your right..
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complete waste of money. why would you even be entertaining getting this done?
 
Grand Potentate said:
complete waste of money. why would you even be entertaining getting this done?
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One. I lost a lot of weight because of this health issues and all the restrictions. I'm getting cold and it's just the beginning of autumn. I use the US Navy method to calculate my body fat % and wanted a more accurate number. I know for sure my waist shrunk and that's driving the reduction. I've lost so much abdomen and waist fat that I don't even know what I'm looking at below the two ab muscles I'm able to retain.

Two. I'm looking for muscle imbalance. Even years ago I was on the elliptical once a week to "stretch out" my right hamstring and hip flexor. I thought I had a weird walk or gait, but the soles on one of my shoes is depleting in a normal way so I'm trying to figure out whether I should do more weights and exercises to focus on one side. When the gyms closed during the pandemic I had almost 2 years of just walking and the pain was a bit unbearable. One of my shoulders is lower than the other but with all this exercise I seem to have "fixed" it.

Three. I don't know whether I will ever have time in the future to be in this shape. I'm in the best shape of my life given my age due to all the extra time and my thinking all this exercise is helping with my blood test numbers. It'd be nice to get a baseline and snapshot.
 
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