[quote author="mike" date="1184640480"]
I've gotten by for most of my adult life on 4.5-6 hours of sleep a night. I definitely know that I feel better with 4.5, 5.5, or 7 hours of sleep than any interval in between that. I've also found that on the rare ocassions that I need to sleep less than 4 hours that I typically feel ok. I know this is unusual but there are quite a few people who are similar.Not optimal for most, but indicates there aren't really hard and fast rules that can be applied equally to everyone.
The night before I qualified for nationals I got less than 4 hours of intermittent sleep. I would sleep about 30 min, wake up for 10 or so, fall asleep again. That went on all night ( I was sleeping on a floor next to an air conditioner, every time it turned on I woke up). The lack of sleep didn't seem to make any difference at all in my performance.
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That is crazy. I find that most of the time when I get too much sleep I actually tend to do poorer in sports as opposed to getting too few hours of sleep.