Hello Everybody.
I am wondering if I am recovering well until my next workout, is there anything to improve about nutrition or sleep, etc?
For example, My target is doing 5 workout in a week but due to some reasons I am not able to sleep more than 6 hours, however I can start every workout as well recovered and don’t miss any workout. Such a condition 8 hours of sleep is still necessary for me? How managing sleep better affect me in long term?
Or, I am recovering well and don’t have problem about energy availability for workouts but I know that I can’t manage nutrition well due to busy life. Is there any sense for pushing harder about good nutiriton in such a case?
PS: I have no aim for any increase in training intensity or volume. I have completed SSB low volume plan. Now doing general build low volume + 2 endurance ride in a week.
Assuming you are recovering enough to still finish the workouts, poor sleep and nutrition is just slowing down your progression. So if you get a +5 increase in ftp during a block you could have seen a +10 with another hour of sleep a night and skipping the Big Macs.
One way to think about it is imagining how well you could perform if you got really drunk every night. You might be able to get on the bike and turn the pedals OK for a while, but at some point it is no longer a sustainable lifestyle.
2 Likes
You can get by on 6 hours of sleep in my opinion but you must first really understand the nature of that sleep. For sure there was a time in my life when 6 hours of ‘sleep’ was my base case. Then I got some equipment to actually assess my sleep habits & found out that 6 hours of laying in bed in the dark did not equate to 6 hours of sleep! 
More like a little over 5 hours!
Definitely, definitely try to get yourself to the point where you get a solid 7 to 7.5 hours of sleep a night for 8 to 10 days. For me, there was a noticeable difference in workout performance at that point. And make sure that you really are getting that amount of sleep…not just laying down in a dark room for that amount of time but getting 85% that much sleep.
Also, DEEP SLEEP MAKES A BIG DIFFERENCE FOR ME. In terms of just mental well being, getting more sleep helps. In terms of physical recovery deep sleep seems to give me the most bang for the buck. If I had to get by on 6 hours of sleep I’d do things to maximize deep sleep. For whatever reason, listening to podcasts during the first three hours of sleep helps me accumulate a LOT more deep sleep minutes.
Don’t know why. Not even 100% sure what deep sleep is. Just telling you what I see from tracking my data.