Uberman Sleeper

Tumblr flagged and removed half of my posts! Their new "no-porn" craze has gone off the handle. If me shirtless talking about my sleep schedule is considered porn, I'm curious what they think of my other private page. 😂

Day 11 - Everyman 4.5

I’m a little tired all the time. That is to be expected for a couple months until I’m adapted.

Daylight savings is today, and generally affects polyphasers heavily.

Day 4 - Everyman4.5

   After all that research, practice, and experimenting, I’ve decided to take the “middle way” and collapse my Uberman schedule into an Everyman schedule. There is not much else to gain by flirting with the Uberman schedule (except SWS compression, but that could take months and detriment my health heavily). So I will take my new understanding of sleep-restrictive scheduling and my recently acquired REM compression and apply them to a schedule that will allow me to hang out with my friends, go dancing, hiking, motorcycling, and weightlift.

 This schedule is called E4 or E4.5, short for “Everyman 4.5″. It will reduce my daily sleep from my original 8h45m monophasic schedule down to a 5h10m daily total. This saves me 3.5 hours a day, which (though it’s no Uberman) is still a ton of time! Additionally, while Uberman is mentally sharpening and bodily taxing, E4.5 is neutral overall, much like monophasic sleep. While it will not give me a boost in energy, I should feel fully rested throughout the day.   E4.5 is flexible so if I get a cold or do a tough legs day workout, I can jump to a recovery schedule the next day. Similarly, if I want to stay out late or I have too much energy and am not falling asleep for my day naps, I can move to a restricted schedule the next day. Naps can be moved a bit (unlike Uberman), but should not be moved unless necessary.   This schedule generally takes 3 weeks to adapt to, though the adaptation process is nowhere near as grueling as Uberman. I will restart my day counter tomorrow when I wake from my first core sleep.

  Yesterday was my first day sleeping outside of my apartment. I had to make arrangements with a friend and also let the people I was spending time with know about my sleep needs. I was prepared for this, and it went well. They were curious about the process and understanding. Luckily, my naps are only 20 minutes so they’re not too invasive. I liked that it offered me time to step away from the conversation and re-enter it with more attention.

  The next morning (this morning), I had my first oversleep. 😭 I woke up on the bed not remembering lying down. I was out for 1 hour. Up until that point was a gruesome 4 hours of miserable sleep dep symptoms in which I was rendered completely unable to function, despite the things that usually help me (like taking a walk outside in the cold weather). The oversleep took place in my “difficult window” I talk about in past posts. This is no surprise. I believe this was my SWS rebound, when my SWS (slow wave sleep) finally decided to give an ultimatum: sleep RIGHT NOW, or it will be forced into cycle compression (which is what I want). It is said this transition, which typically happens around day 8-10, is impossible without another person there to keep an eye out. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will stop the body from taking the SWS sleep it needs. I hope my oversleep does not affect my adaptation too much, though it may delay my SWS rebound a bit more. So long as it’s not repeated, it shouldn’t be an issue.

  Some mantra for me to reflect upon (not intended for my followers, but read if you like): I adopted this endeavor to support my life. I knew the first week would be a sacrifice. That’s why I researched, prepared, and even took off work for it. Now that week has passed and the struggle shows little to no sign of slowing for the next couple months, at least. The info I received from PureDoxyk’s book was misleading and outdated in terms of sleep science.

  Until now, I have repeatedly overextended myself to make room for this new aspect of life within an agreement that it would, after the week, begin to settle itself and allow me to continue my exercise and social lives with the same, if not intensified, rigor. My end of the bargain in its barest form is adherence to the schedule. From this point onward, equihexiphasic sleeping, I commit to you no more than that.

  I can not take 3-8 months off my exercise program. I refuse to have only quiet nights in out of fear that the balls-out dancing I do will tax me a sleep deficit.

  I want you around, equihexiphasic sleep. I like you. You teach me a tremendous amount about my relationship to sleep and fatigue generally. You continue to fascinate me daily. You are a form of rigorous self-practice, and for that I have respect for you. You are welcome to remain a part of my life so long as you honor your neighbors. Weightlifting is not your enemy; he is your brother. Socializing, your sister. If you do not fit within this house, you may leave.

  Should you go, I may replace you with an Everyman Polyphasic Sleep pattern. Or I may return to monophasic sleeping with a new toolkit for efficient sleep. Before you make up your mind, though, understand my offer. Should you stay and support this family, we will protect you. You have many needs, and we have been good to you. We understand your inflexibility and love you within it. We will offer you the diet you demand. We will supplement you with practices of deep rest. We will defend your sleep time ferociously, even in the most hectic containers.

Day 8 - First Oversleep! 😴💤😭

Note: Feel free to skip or skim this post. There’s almost no useful information here. Why did I upload it? It’s a very honest demonstration of what it feels like to me when I say I’m in “zombie mode” or “exhausted”. You can see it’s extreme, lol! What you can’t see is how hard I have to fight every second not to give in and lay down for just a second. These states typically last about 3 hours for me (which feels like an eternity) before my second wind kicks in and I’m peachy again.

From 0:40-0:55 you’ll see I microsleep sitting up. Very interesting to see it filmed! Microsleep is a common symptom of sleep deprivation.

Night 6

Night 5 - no more gym during adaptation

Aside from the gym setting me back a couple difficult naps this morning, I’ve felt fantastic since then. I was woken by a neighbor during a nap where I was dreaming heavily which tells me that my body is getting REM sleep during my naps. Watch my body change, this time not into an awkward preteen but instead a hyper-efficient adult polyphasic sleeper!

Day 5 - Volume UP for this one!

Lol my new phone made this highlight reel from a video of me trying to sit still and meditate after the gym on Day 5 of Uberman. You can see I was so zombified I almost knocked my head on the cabinets in front of me a few times. LMAO! 😂😂😂 SOOOOO tired.

Just a fair disclaimer here, this post has absolutely NO scientific backing and is much more in the category of “logic-driven pseudoscience”. Still, it’s the only thing that could help me get over that bad bump last night, so I have no shame in applying it. Placebo or not, results are objective.

  Too much of my struggle has been focused on “if I want to maintain muscle, I need X hours of SWS and at least Y hours of REM. Assuming LNREM...” and so on. There is a certain pressure inherent to this kind of thinking which manifests as anxiety because in the end, it’s out of my hands. I lay down. I wake up. No further decision of what my body and mind do with the time is in my hands.

  So it got me wondering suppose that my body never got SWS, for example. Could I still make this work? Well, truth is, when I say or hear other’s say “the body needs such and such amount of SWS”, a leap in logic is being made. We don’t know how much SWS sleep the body needs. Sleep science is a difficult, finicky field. All we can say with certainty is “the body needs something that such and such amount of SWS appears to provide”. Did you catch the distinction?

  SWS sleep may be the most common way to fulfill the body’s need of (????) because it’s consistent and universal. It is entirely possible that there are other ways of scratching that itch, so to speak. SWS is where the body and mind finally slow down to recover and heal. Perhaps consciously grounding and creating distance from mental and physical activity in a form like meditation would fully satiate the body’s appetite for SWS for those who have the control to sit and practice.

  Similarly, we can look at REM. What does REM really give the body? 80% of our dreams occur in REM sleep, and the mind shuffles quickly between thoughts. It is commonly suggested that this is when the mind sorts and files away all of one’s experiences. How else could that need be met? I suppose spending time with a very loose structure and many creative options would do the trick. Perhaps scheduling dedicated creative time would allow the mind to process whatever is coming up and file it away without the need for REM at all.

Day 4 - feeling good physically... but thinking of quitting

The most depressing data just got presented to me. Basically it says that Uberman (at least the lifestyle I’m trying to use it for) is physically impossible in humans. There’s some science/logic to back up this claim (see references below), and no one has ever proved to adapt fully to an Uberman sleep schedule and remain physically active and building muscle while maintaining such a sleep-restrictive schedule. Basically, muscle repair is determined by SWS (slow wave sleep) quantity. Uberman restricts SWS to slightly below it’s minimum because it needs to share the only available 2 hrs with REM sleep. So building muscle is physically impossible. If you work out at the gym you will just build a higher SWS deficit. Since you don’t have any spare sleeptime to offer that extra SWS deficit, your muscles stay micro-torn and don’t heal to grow. What’s more is now you’ll be more tired than ever with that increased deficit (not to mention an unbalance in SWS vs REM sleep pressures! ugh! 😫) Uberman physically prevents you from building muscle and can even deteriorate your current muscle mass in order to make your body more efficient so it can operate on less sleep.

There’s also a fact presented on the same site that no one ever, in the decades of doing polyphasic research, has been able to make it past the Day 10-ish SWS rebound without human intervention. The body will sleep in past any alarm, they say. Noise alarms, light alarms, fan alarms, water alarms, even electroshock alarms. The only way to get through it is to have a friend there to wake you up. I’ve seen a video of someone in SWS rebound. It took 2 people yanking him around like a rag doll for a few minutes before he showed any signs of life. I live alone and won’t have the luxury of a human alarm.

Conclusion for today:

I feel baited and tantalized! Even cheated in a way! I did tons of research and didn’t see any of this data before. I’ve been so excited for this and put a lot of effort into it so far. It’d be a huge bummer to see it fail. I don’t know how much faith to put into this one site, though it appears generally reputable. Now I’m worried I’m going to look and feel weary for 10 days with low performance, then I’m going to crash and have to readjust to monophasic sleeping which will take another week of miserable sleep deprivation and low performance. This would hugely detriment my work, my social life, pretty much everything.

If that happens, then at least I will have gotten a cool experience. I will be able to say I tried and I will have learned to nap with REM which is a useful tool that very few people have and it’s said you never truly lose it. Still, the cost of this is high.

Alternatively, I could give up now, even though I’m feeling great. I could be monophasic again within a day or 2 and basically act like this whole thing never happened. Although that’s the safer option, I’m leaning toward playing it out and seeing what happens. You never know, I may be the first documented person to ever adapt past a SWS rebound without a human alarm... and the first to gain muscle with 2 hours of sleep a day. 

References (read these! They’re intense!):

Sleep Mechanics - background info

Day 3 😪

One of the most unique parts of this vlog is that I aim for it to document interactions between fitness and polyphasic sleeping, a topic widely wondered about and speculated toward that no one I can find has truly explored or tested.

As such, today was my first day going to the gym. I liked being able to go suuuuuper early in the morning and beat the crowd since all times of the day or night are pretty much equal to me. I found my motivation to go was significantly lowered due to fatigue and even though I did make it there, I would not have had the energy for one of my usual weight training days.

Still, once I was out and about I found I had plenty of energy to give. I tested my strength, concentration, and coordination with handstand practice. My longest hold was about 15 seconds. This is a normal hold-time for me and tells me that if I choose to output my reserve, I could be fully functional. I believe I could have trained much harder than I did, though since I’m still in the adaptation phase I am doing everything in my power not to accrue more sleep debt than is necessary.

My weight and body composition have not changed (of course, being only Day 3)

Boy, am I tired. I’ve laid down only 4 hours of the last 48 now. Lying down sounds sooo good to me. Luckily it’s daytime and I can leave the house to preoccupy myself.

Night 2 - Evening