Thinking about the Iliad, after the battle scenes, and the sunsets, when both sides go back to their camps, proceed to slaughter a bunch of oxen, roast the thigh bones, and then feast, sleep, and wake up the next morning to the rosy-fingered Light, and then continue to do battle.
Some thing I’ve discovered especially now that I am lifting so much, how well you eat your meat might be by far the most important recovery tool. That is, if you have the option to stay up a little bit later, but sure you have enough meat, it is better than going to sleep hungry, not having consumed enough meat.
Also, I’ve noticed that the nights where I feast like a demigod, I actually end up sleeping way deeper. Then perhaps the lesson is that it doesn’t matter how many hours you sleep, but how deeply you sleep. Ideally you would sleep a long time, and sleep deeply, and it seems that the critical ingredient to sleeping deeply is the nutritional density of your meat.
For example, the days where I have tons of bone marrow, beef ribs, heart, liver, innards, I sleep the best.