Another Q for Eason: working out on no sleep, yay or nay?

Well yes, exercise is less productive if you don't allow your body to repair and rebuild. I recall something about the satellite cells (cells which we believe are responsible for building as well as repairing muscle fibers) being more active during sleep. The thing about a lack of sleep among many other things is that it causes your levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, to rise. This hormone is linked to (fat) weight gain and breakdown of lean mass. The kicker is that exercise stress also leads to a increase in cortisol, which obviously doesn't hurt people who get sleep but I'm not sure what kind of additive effect, if any, it would have over somebody who was sleep deprived. While I would never, ever recommend somebody who is sleep deprived to do any heavy resistance training, the exercises you listed don't sound strenuous at all and safety-wise, I don't think it would cause any problems. You may even feel some energy boost afterwards from the exercise- I'd be interested in knowing if this is the case- but on a basic level, what is going on here is you're taking a worn-out and stressed machine and subjecting it to more wear and stress, it can't be healthy. Since I have no definitive answer, my suggestion I guess is that you try it out for a couple of times. If you feel better from doing the light exercise, then great. If you feel worse, then discontinue it immediately.

Alternatively, you could get a full 8 hours sleep, but I know what the chances of that are .

I guess that beats me by 3 hours... still, what authority does that give me about sleep... At least one of the perks of my job is that I work from 2-9pm, so I can always sleep late, and get to work early and work out.

I've always heard that excersizing leads to lowered general levels of stress and higher quality sleep, I'm supposed to be writing a 3-5 page paper worth 10% of my final grade in a class right now (due in 4.5 hours) so I won't look for studies, but rather than adding to his problems I think that their is a good chance it may work to aleviate them to a degree.

I'd go with no, just on the basis that if you're exhausted before you work out, what are the odds you're going to be able to make it through the day after you've expended the very little bit of energy you had left? Plus, what do you think the quality of your workout will be like? I'd venture it would be fairly crappy, although I don't know if you'll have a coffee enema hooked up or not

Just make sure you're eating through the night. I don't know the positive/negatives of what you're proposing, but going in without food energy would seem like a bad idea to me. If anything you're just training yourself for a hell night if you go into the military Maybe try jumping rope too and let us know how it goes!

I trained for my first marathon during my first semester of b-school. It was tough, but I got through and finished both successfully. I can say that running has been helpful in getting me up for another day - both in getting the heart pumping, and in clearing the mind. Not that I'd make a habit of repeating this more than two nights in a row, but for those 4-hour-sleep nights (hello Overtaining...), I always feel better when I run for at least 30 minutes. Good luck!