Friday 6.6

Art of the Power Nap

While nutrition is usually our subject when talking about recovery, sleep is a topic that is extremely important to health, performance, and longevity also. We've all had our bad nights (some more than others), and we've all dealt with our share of sleep debt. What we need is to have a few more tools in the toolbox for trying to optimize sleep. One of these is the power nap (the morning clients know exactly what I'm talking about, most of them have seen us napping after the 5 am class).

Definition, from Wikipedia:
A power nap is a short sleep which terminates before the occurrence of deep sleep or slow wave sleep.

An ultra short episode of sleep is sufficient to promote declarative memory performance

A brief afternoon nap following nocturnal sleep restriction: which nap duration is most recuperative?

A few key take-aways:

• Brief naps, <30min, can be restorative mentally and emotionally.
• You cannot “make up” sleep debt! 5hrs sleep plus a 3hr nap (who can even do that?) is not equal to a solid 8 hrs. Why? Length an completeness of sleep cycles.
• Naps have the potential to speed recovery, based on the fact you naturally release gH (growth hormone) as you sleep, and naps will improve immediate performance in sleep-deprived athletes.
• We know that sleep extension improves performance and recovery; I don’t think it’s a stretch to hypothesis adding naps to an already optimal sleep-wake time frame (8hr) will also improve recovery.

Strength:

A1. Bench press 

10.8.6.4.2

A2. Single leg deadlift 

5 sets x 6 reps each leg 

Wod:

7 minute amrap 

3 Thrusters 

3 dbu 

6 thrusters 

6 dbu 

9 thrusters 

9 dbu

12....

12....

Etc.....

Etc....

Level 1: 55/45, lateral bar hops(matching reps) 

Level 2: 75/55, dbu( if no dbu then double reps for lateral bar hops) 

Level 3: 95/65, dbu