Stefanie's

[robin1]

@Stefanie

I was telling Dejan the other day that I am thinking of trying out being a polyphasic (=“having several periods of activity interrupted by intervening periods of rest in each 24 hours”. This is done by adapting the cyrcadian rhythm so there is a total of 2 hours rest in each 24 hours, usually split in 3 intervals (of 40’ sleep each). Studies have shown that even athletes have benefited from this kind of adaptation.

The studies you seem to be referring to were done on sailors, and the performance measure was sailing speed.

(http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/747247_751304857_782431473.pdf)

I think it can be expected that average sailing speed will increase if sailors spend less time sleeping during a race, but I don’t think that this necessarily implies they were actually performing better while awake.

Dwain Chambers claims that he only sleeps about 4-5 hours a day though, so apparently it’s possible to perform well as a sprinter without getting the recommended 8 hours of sleep per day.