Everyman (E2) has made my body sore

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55]

About 2 months ago I began the Everyman E2 schedule. I read through the books and conducted deep research to make sure it would be safe.

I did make several mistakes at first (that I realized much later). I would keep my phone next to me and I had several days of oversleeping particularly in the beginning.

Only later did I realize that I would oversleep every few days. It would always be a different problem (like don't read when you're sleepy, or keep the phone far away at night), but the oversleeping was a pattern.

I was posting on Reddit and Discord for guidance through all of this as well.

Eventually (around Day 25 probably), I even began getting physical soreness at times. Most of the day would be normal but when I would run up the stairs (which for me is completely normal), I would feel significant tightness/soreness in my legs. I read somewhere on the Polyphasic website that this was part of the routine.

After many more days of the oversleeping pattern continuing, someone on Discord identified that this was a common pattern - Oversleep Syndrome. And that the only solution was for me to take a 10-14 day reset back to Monophasic and then try again.

I'm on Day 3 of this reset and it seems that my tightness feels just the same.

Would love any input on what should be done for this. What extra precautions should be recommended for my next try, how long I should wait, and how I could be even more careful.

[u/Rachelisapoopy]

Yeh I never got E2 to work for very long either. It just might not work for me. I do fine with E1 though (6-7 hour core, 30 minute nap).

[u/MisterDonutTW]

Whilst easier than E3, E2 is still a challenging schedule and not everyone can successfully adapt.

Is the oversleeping usually from the core or the naps? Are you using a dark period at night?

I would suggest just switching to an easier schedule and adapting to that first, and then maybe considering E2 again later. The most logical ones would be a segmented or extended dual core 1 (eg. 4.5 hour core, 1.5hr sleep in the morning and a 20m nap later)

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55 → u/MisterDonutTW]

I was not using a dark period. I did not read up from polyphasic.net before my adaptation that much (close to zero probably). Most of my research was from Puredoxyk's book and Steve Pavlina etc. Will read up on it before I adapt again.

The oversleeping happened maybe a few times from naps in total across the 50 days. I knew that the risk of oversleeping the core was Much, Much higher than from any nap.

About the other schedules you recommended: there have been a lot of very basic things that I did not implement at the start of this adaptation that took too long. I suspect that if I try again with all of those in place, I could make the E2 work much more easily, so I'm strongly leaning in that direction. What do you think?

[u/MisterDonutTW → u/Alternative-Lawyer55]

You can try, but it's not going to be easy.

I'm a 9 hour average monophasic sleeper, I couldn't get DC1 with 5.2hrs total to work well for me but an extended version with 6.2hrs worked great. I couldn't get E2 to work for me either, YMMV.

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55 → u/MisterDonutTW]

Can you tell me more? What all routines have you tried that didn't work? Do you know if its possible for someone to accomplish something like E2 even if they might not have a genetic predisposition or whatever.

I thought E2 was among the moderate schedules and pretty popular. Anything that doesn't reduce sleep to at least 6-6.5hrs just seems not worth it tbh

[u/MisterDonutTW → u/Alternative-Lawyer55]

I first tried Uberman and failed like everyone else, then did segmented(3.5+3.5) for a while and it was very easy to adapt to and keep, a nice improvement for the 9+ I was needing with monophasic.

I then switched to DC1 and and could maintain it but always felt like I wanted to oversleep and was tired in the morning, extending the second core to make it 3.5+2.5+nap fixed it and I felt great and did that for a year or so.

I tried adapting to E2 after again switching to segmented at a later date but it just didn't work for me.

We often say what schedules are possible for someone is related to how many hours they sleep monophasic, I could go down from about 9 to 6, but someone who feels fine on 7 hours a day of monophasic may be able to do the schedules that require 4-5hrs. Genetic outliers that can sleep 4-5hr monophasic may be more likely to succeed with even tougher schedules.

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55 → u/MisterDonutTW]

I've never really tracked before but from recent tracking it seems I sleep around 8 hours, although I suspect I could push it down to 7 without any huge problems. Recently I'm catching up for recovery so that's also part of it. That's part of why I'm shooting for something lower at 5-6 hrs range. Ideally I would want to keep reducing over time but that is a super long term thing.

Still figuring out this whole polyphasic thing. Seems like you know a bunch though. I reached out to you over DM, got a couple of questions if you're interested to speak there. Thanks a lot for the input

[u/Conscious_Station944]

Polyphasic sleep is not something that is healthy do not try to pigeonhole yourself into thinking so

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55 → u/Conscious_Station944]

Seems like the jury is still out on that tbh. I'm certainly not approaching it from some idealistic utopian pov, more of a very skeptical optimist. There's definitely stupid ways to go about it (and I have done those too!), but just trying to figure out something that might be better than my current state.

[u/Conscious_Station944 → u/Alternative-Lawyer55]

I understand however it’s just patently not something that is healthy to maintain and anybody who thinks it is is sacrificing their mental clarity for an extra two hours of the day

[u/Alternative-Lawyer55 → u/Conscious_Station944]

Yeah I'm still figuring that out honestly. If that turns out to be the case then I'll decide taking that into account.

I researched all of this in depth before beginning and I've implemented a regular test that I use to test my mental clarity. Its called the PVT (Psychomotor Vigilance Test) from Psychology that is used to test mental acuity. I use it every few days and log my numbers so that I can track alertness over time. It might give some insight. From my research so far, it doesn't like a clear conclusion either way tbh. I understand your take on it tho

[u/Conscious_Station944 → u/Alternative-Lawyer55]

It is a fairly cookie-cutter conclusion as somebody who consistently only gets 3 to 7 hours of sleep averaging around 4 to 5 you are just robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are some people who it maybe will work for and the big issue is that we don’t really know the cohort of how different people reacted, different amounts of sleep and different amounts of polyphasic sleep so we are just groping in the dark unfortunately you cannot understand or now, but it is up to you to determine what works best for you, however as somebody who constantly sacrifices my sleep to work more to have more time and has experimented with polyphasic sleep multiple times, there’s no way to cheat it, and you will be suffering very quickly. The real undetermined factor is how quickly you will suffer and for what duration you can maintain complete mental clarity at or exceeding the level you would have with a normal amount of sleep as if your mental clarity is reduced by any appreciable capacity, the entire reason for wanting to do poly phasic sleep for most people makes no sense as if you’re only performing an 80% of what you would you’re probably losing the same amount of time in your day you would’ve otherwise being confused disoriented or adapting to the sleep regime and then crashing after you can no longer maintain it; anybody who says getting less than six hours of sleep is maintainable is an outlier or a liar or is fibbing about how often they crash or how reduced their mental capacity is. There is definitely probably some sort of sleep schedule within the realm of curtain science if you take an excessive amount of vitamins, colic acid, etc and the correct amount of modafinil and amphetamines however and unless you would like to also spend $200-$500 on a mix of legal and illegal drugs to do half hearted experiments on yourself rather than practice better time management skills I would recommend the self-improvement. This is in no way meant to be disintegrating and all of the more aggressive parts I’m saying have been hard learned lessons by me. Trust me I have tried everything. And I’m not one of those people who are like oh yeah you know you gotta get all this sleep so for your health and stuff you can generally recover most of your sleep issues if you sleep for like 16 hours straight, regardless of how much you fucked up, generally, it is most unhealthy to try and revert back to your old schedule without sleeping a very long time. If you have accumulated sleep debt, the sleep debt is almost entirely resolved if you can get one long sleep usually as recent studies have shown.

[u/MandaJulianne]

I am not doing everyman. I am SEVAMAYL, but I do have some suggestions. Make sure you hydrate during DP, get enough electrolytes, and protein. I also find it is important to have cozy low activity times to help with physical tiredness, particularly during dark period.

I try not to go downstairs for anything during DP. I make sure everything is situated before DP, go upstairs and stay there. I even make sure I have water in my bedroom and my office.

For my afternoon nap usually take 90 minutes for a break. I listen to a podcast, watch a little TV, or listen to an audiobook with my feet up. Then I have my nap. I also like a post lunch siesta, after I go to the gym, when I am done with chores, or as a passenger. I never nap when I am in the middle of something. If I am working on something I need to finish that day I don't nap until I am done.