Rajiv Mehta asked some questions about using one-legged standing to improve sleep. I do three sets of two (left leg, right leg) each day.
Q. How do you spread out your three sets (have you found some minimum time between sets, say 3 hours)?
A. I make sure there’s at least 4 hours between sets. The effect was weaker with only 2 hours between sets. The time of day doesn’t matter but for convenience I usually do one set in the morning, another set in the afternoon, and a third set in the evening.
Q. They say exercise before bed is not a good idea. Do you make sure your last set is at least X hours before bed?
A. No. If anything this particular exercise will make you more sleepy, not less.
Seth,
I continue to be impressed by this phenomenon. I’ll give a smidgen of background followed by a few questions … I’m a psychophysiologist, and have taught sleep hygiene principles to clients for 20 years now. I’ve also had to be very careful to manage my sleep thoughtfully myself because of how I’m wired.
When I use this technique, my sleep is consistently better than when I don’t. There is something going on here beyond just an exercise effect, because the quality of sleep with this technique is different in a way that is hard to articulate. It’s almost like a “drugged” sleep without any of the negative side effects of a drug. I haven’t been able to get regular exercise for some time now because of injuries, and so until I incorporated this technique I was missing that crucial component of my sleep hygiene. I’m going on memory here, but it seems to me that the sleep this technique gives me is qualitatively different from the sleep I’d have the night after “ordinary” strength training or aerobics.
Now for some things I’d love your feedback on:
1. DIFFERENT EXERCISES One of my injuries is a knee injury, and I have been cautioned that my quads are too strong for my hamstrings (this may have figured into injury). I’m told that the quad/hamstring balance is critical. For a long time I was doing this technique by standing on one leg, with the knee a little bent in order to make it more work. I’ve stopped doing that for now until the knee issues are better sorted out. Now I do these in rotation on different days: one very slow ab curl, one “superman” (get on stomach, arch back with arms and legs extended like superman flying), a slow push-up, etc. As best as I can tell, the same phenomenon is at work with these various iterations, as long as I am working a group of large muscles to the fatigue point. I’m not clear if any of them deliver superior results with sleep though.
I’m interested in your thoughts on this, and also have you considered calling this something other than “standing on one leg”? I’ve found myself tagging it “interspersed isometrics” but that is really gangly. It would be interesting to know if anyone else is using other muscle groups. It might be possible to have some small but positive effect on overall strength and fitness by switching methodically between muscle groups.
2. You wrote earlier about “signaling molecules” playing a role, and I wonder if you can share more about that. Is that a hypothesis or have such been identified? I wonder if you could increase your “dose” by doing to different sets in a row (stand L leg, stand R leg, ultra slow situp, ultra slow superman). If each muscle group sends signaling molecules, then I wonder what’s the impact of such a large dose vs. multiple smaller doses.
3. That leads to my final question for the night: I’d be interested to start tracking this sort of thing more systematically. What would your recommend? I have a Mac at home, and also use an Android phone. Any ready made programs that would do the job well? It would be nice to have a way to track the impact of various exercises to tease apart what works best for myself.
Thanks!
Wayne
P.S., if the impact on my sleep is typical, I think you’ve happened upon perhaps the most powerful behavioral tool for improving a person’s sleep!
Thanks, Wayne. To answer your questions:
1. I haven’t done much with other muscle groups. It’s so easy to get the effect via one-legged standing: I can read at the same time I stand on one leg. I couldn’t read or watch TV while doing the other exercises you describe. But I completely agree that for overall fitness it would be better to use more than just your legs. I haven’t considered other names, no. “standing on one leg” is really clear, although I agree it’s not the essence of it. The essence is probably use large muscles to exhaustion.
2. The signalling explanation is just a hypothesis. I’m sure you can increase your dose by using different muscles besides the legs, but it is easier, at least for me, to increase the dose by doing the legs more than once — waiting until the signalling molecules are resynthesized, which seems to take about 4 hours. The molecules just seem to swim in the blood with no noticeable effect until you are asleep. For example, at the end of the day I can’t tell how much one-legged standing I’ve done. Only the quality of my sleep will reveal that.
3. To measure the effect objectively you can use a Zeo or WakeMate. I haven’t yet done this but plan to. I’m sure the one-legged standing reduces how often you wake up in the middle of the night. You can use either one to measure the reduction in waking up at night. The WakeMate is much cheaper and works with an Android phone. But you don’t need any technology at all to make the measurements I did. Just rate how rested you feel when you wake up in the morning. If you make these measurements I’d be very curious to see what you find out.
Thanks Seth. I just ordered the WakeMate – had been thinking about the Zeo but like the WakeMate price a lot better. Looks like it will travel well as well.
For something so simple there are actually a number of variables, such as exercise used and timing of the exercises. Do you have any thoughts about how to proceed most efficiently to test out some of these factors?
Warmly,
Wayne
To test the effects of various exercises and so on, I suggest you proceed with slow and simple designs. Such as ABA. Do one thing for one or two weeks, then do another thing for one or two weeks, then go back to the first thing.
Seth, I tried standing on one leg to improve my sleep. It did not work at all. Every time I dozed off, I fell over.