What time should you exercise for better sleep?

Getting enough exercise during the day is essential for ensuring you’re getting enough sleep at night

Exercise lowers stress levels, uses up excess energy, and promotes healthy digestion, all of which will boost both the quality and duration of sleep. However, simply getting enough exercise isn’t enough to guarantee restful sleep. The timing of this exercise can be just as important.

While it seems logical that tiring yourself out with exercise before bed will help you sleep better, the truth is that it will likely lead to a night of tossing and turning. Exercise does aid sleep, but only if timed right.

The relationship between exercise and sleep

We all know that exercise is good for us. It uses up energy, burns fat, and is good for our mental health. It doesn’t take much exercise to keep the average person healthy; raising your heart rate for just thirty minutes a day is enough give your health a boost, whether this be in the form of a brisk walk, a morning swim, or a half hour yoga session.

Obviously healthy people tend to have healthier sleep. Your daily half-hour exercise routine can improve how deeply you sleep, how quickly you fall asleep, and how long you remain asleep, further enhancing your overall health. 

This is because a good night’s sleep depends upon lower blood pressure and a calm mindset, two things that people with an active lifestyle are more likely to have. Regular activity can also reduce sleep apnoea, insomnia, and other sleep disorders.

However, timing is crucial. While exercise reduces blood pressure, soothes anxiety, and promotes heart health in the long term, in the short term it increases your heart rate and temperature, and provides your brain with excess stimulation.

The best thing you can do for a healthy sleep is to go to bed relaxed. If you’ve exercised earlier in the day, the endorphins in your brain will have settled, your temperature will have dropped, and your heart rate will have returned to its normal rhythm.

The circadian rhythm

That said, having a regular exercise routine can have a huge positive impact on your sleep health.

Circadian rhythms are natural 24-hour cycles of the body’s internal clock, dictating at what time of day you’ll be tired, alert, hungry, and even hotter or colder. One of the most important of the circadian rhythms is the sleep-wake cycle.

If you find yourself feeling most alert when you want to be at your most tired, do not fret. It is possible to reset a sleep-wake cycle that has been thrown off balance by an unhealthy or irregular lifestyle. Get enough sunlight, have regular mealtimes, and, of course, get plenty of exercise during the day.

Exercise in the morning or afternoon shifts your circadian rhythm forward by stimulating earlier release of melatonin. This means that going for a morning jog or a lunch time gym class will help you fall asleep earlier and easier.

The best exercises for better sleep

Aerobic or resistance exercises performed in the morning, like weightlifting or running, stimulate earlier melatonin release and may help you fall asleep quicker at night.

Save more high intensity workouts for the afternoon, as this lowers the amount of orexin released by the brain, a neurotransmitter which promotes wakefulness.

While exercise last thing at night will not help you sleep, light aerobic exercise in the evening may prevent you from waking up during the night, calming your anxiety after a busy day and preparing the mind for sleep. Light exercise in the evening raises your temperature gradually while also giving you enough time to cool down before bed, mirroring the natural fluctuation of the sleep-wake cycle as your body prepares for sleep.

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