Arnold Schwarzenegger's “sleep faster” strategy The former Mr Olympia sleeps just six hours a night so that he has at least 18 hours of productive time during the day. The seven-time bodybuilding champion reportedly spent as much time in the gym as he did in bed during his early career.
During his time in office, Churchill adopted a biphasic sleep cycle, snoozing for five hours each night and then topping this up with a two-hour nap in the late afternoon. Incidentally, the biphasic sleep cycle is also popular in warmer climes around the globe – the most famous example being the siesta.
All of them picked 8-hours of sleep each night. It really is that important. There's no point in doing hardcore workouts if you're consistently getting less than 6-hours of sleep per night. 8-hours is ideal, while 9-10 hours is even better.
Albert Einstein is said to have slept 10 hours per night, plus regular daytime naps. Other great achievers, inventors, and thinkers – such as Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Leonardo da Vinci, and Sir Isaac Newton – are said to have slept between two and four hours per day.
The prolific inventor Thomas Edison slept three or four hours at night, regarding sleep as a waste of time, "a heritage from our cave days." President Clinton grabs five to six hours.
This was Nikola Tesla's Intense Daily Routine… .. and I decided to step into his foots to live his life for 48 hours. This means up to 17 hours of work (actually 20 hours to be honest), 10 miles of walking, a specific diet, doing mental methods, and only sleeping 2 hours per day.
Some people are genetically wired to wake up earlier or sleep less. Others seem to thrive on less sleep only through sheer determination. For executives like PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi and Twitter's Jack Dorsey, sleep is often sacrificed in order to excel at work and still manage to have a personal life.
As you can see in this interesting infographic, Nikola Tesla never slept for more than two hours, Isaac Newton slept for three to four hours every day, and Thomas Edison slept for 20 minutes every three hours.
Discover why Iron Man only sleeps for 3 hours and the impact it has on his superhero journey. Learn about Tony Stark's struggles, sacrifices, and the importance of rest for a healthy life.
Take Away. Sleeping and napping are both important for muscle growth. They are even more critical for muscle growth if you don't get enough sleep at night or wake up often. Remember to keep your naps short and timed correctly, and you should start seeing the benefits!
For example, if you're training multiple times a day and working long hours outside of the gym, then you may require more rest. Sleeping for 7-9 hours per night is crucial, especially if you are looking to change body composition, increase muscle mass, and be ready for your personal training session the next day.
The 30th president of the United States would often sleep up to 11 hours a day, including his two-to-four-hour afternoon naps.
Instead of sleeping 8 continuous hours, he takes strategic 90-minute power naps throughout the day.
His favourite meal was roast chicken with fried potatoes and onions. Napoleon was a workaholic who would sleep for only three or four hours a night.
It's common knowledge that sleep is good for your brain – and Einstein took this advice more seriously than most. He reportedly slept for at least 10 hours per day – nearly one and a half times as much as the average American today (6.8 hours).
Isaac Newton: IQ 190–200
Although he's best known for his universal principles of gravity (which weren't inspired by an apple falling on his head, by the way), the 17th-century thinker was also a mathematician, astronomer and writer, contributing to the principles of visible light and laws of motion.
The inventor is said to have napped while holding a ball in each hand, presuming that, as he fell asleep, the orbs would fall to the floor and wake him. This way he could remember the sorts of thoughts that come to us as we are nodding off, which we often do not recall.
Jay Leno is sharing why he just does not sleep much. The comedian, 74, made headlines back in December 2024 when he revealed he only sleeps about four hours each night during an appearance on Bill Maher's Club Random podcast.
Speaker 2: You do six hours every night. Jocko Willink: Yeah, I usually go to bed around 10:30-11:00, and I wake up at 4:30, so I get five-and- a-half to six hours almost every night. And sometimes I tell people, I think sleeping is good. I do it almost every single day.
Our results indicate that later sleep timing in those with higher IQs is not due to physiological differences, but rather due to later work schedules. Later working times and the resulting lower social jetlag may be one of the reasons why higher IQ is associated with lower prospective morbidity and mortality.
Leonardo da Vinci and Nikola Tesla, who blessed the world with incredible art and alternating current (AC) electricity, supposedly slept for a total of two hours per day, in which they took 20 minute naps roughly every 4 hours – something known as the Uberman polyphasic sleep cycle.
Thomas Edison: The famous inventor only required about three to four hours of shut eye each night, according to The New York Times. He regarded sleep as “a heritage from our cave days.”
Mark Zuckerberg claims that he's mastered what we all dream of—getting about seven to eight hours of sleep per night. In a post on the newly launched Threads app, he wrote, “Really dialed in my sleep with Eight Sleep and Oura,” referring to a smart mattress and smart ring meant to help us catch our Zzzs.