When it comes to working out, you know that what you do in the gym matters. But what you do outside of the gym—what you eat, what you drink, and especially how you sleep—is just as crucial. In fact, you have to sleep for the exercise to be really effective.
We exercise for a specific purpose: for cardiovascular health, to increase lean muscle mass, to improve endurance, etc. All of these “goals” require sleep.
Without sleep, exercise does not provide these benefits. If you don’t sleep, you weaken your body.
Sleep gives your body time to recover, conserve energy, repair, and strengthen the muscles worked during exercise. When we get enough good quality sleep, the body produces growth hormone. During childhood and adolescence, growth hormone makes us grow, as its name suggests. And when we’re older, it helps us build lean muscle and helps our bodies repair itself when we’ve been torn during intense training. Growth hormone is essential for athletic recovery.
Le probleme est que nous avons un problema majeur lorsqu’il s’agit de dormir : Plus de 30 % d’entre nous avons un sommeil de mauvaise qualité, ce qui signifie que nous no bénéficions pas des sept à huit hours par nuit recommandées pour grown ups. This means that these people are also sabotaging their own fitness goals.
Regular exercise can absolutely help you sleep
Can exercise help you sleep?
Absolutely. And if you’ve never experienced the instant sleep-inducing exhaustion after a day of hiking or a grueling class at boot camp, there’s plenty of scientific research to back up that claim. In one study, people with a reported sleep time of less than 6.5 hours performed moderate-intensity exercise (walking, stationary cycling, running, or walking on a treadmill) four times a week for six weeks. By the end of the experiment, they reported getting 75 more minutes of sleep a night, more than any medication could provide, according to the study authors.
Exercise actually has a chemical effect on the brain
Physical activity creates more adenosine in the brain, and adenosine makes us sleepy. Fun fact: Adenosine is the chemical that caffeine blocks from making you feel more alert. The more we exercise, the more this chemical pushes us to sleep.
Exercise also helps you maintain your circadian rhythm, or your body’s internal clock. Exercise helps your body understand the schedule it follows, and morning exercise prepares your body for a better night’s sleep.
But what about exercise at the end of the day?
While exercising at night may keep you awake longer, science says it’s all about choosing the right type of exercise and finding the exercise schedule that’s right for you.
According to a study, people who said they exerted themselves more before bed actually slept more efficiently. They also fell asleep faster, slept more soundly, and woke up less during the night. Another study found that moderate-intensity exercises before bed helped ease anxiety before bed.
That said, it’s probably best to stick to low-intensity exercises, like yoga, Pilates, or barre, if you plan to break a sweat close to bedtime. Research has shown that high-intensity exercise delays sleep, possibly due to increased heart rate after a gym session.
Try to find what works for you. Every person is different when it comes to whether a particular workout might be challenging. If you have trouble falling asleep, raising your heart rate too close to bedtime may help, but for others, breaking a sweat late in the day may not affect sleep.
Why exercise and sleep are the best for stress relief
Can better sleep help me exercise?
Once again, the short answer is yes. The more rested you are, the better your body and mind will work, even in the gym. According to a study, adequate sleep has been shown to help motivate people to stick with their exercise plans and train the next day. The more people in the study got sleep, the more likely they were to complete their exercise program.
Not only can getting enough sleep give you more energy and strength to optimize your workout, but its effects on focus, mood, and attention can make you more efficient and better prepared for that workout. .
On the other hand, lack of sleep can make it difficult to exercise. Sleep deprivation does not affect cardiovascular and respiratory responses to exercise, aerobic and anaerobic performance capacity, muscle strength, or electromechanical responses. This means that, from a biomechanical point of view, there is no reason for sleep to reduce your physical abilities. But you’ll tire faster if you sleep less, which will make it harder for you to train at your best.
In fact, even after just one sleepless night, endurance performance on a treadmill drops, probably because the exercise feels harder.
That’s not to say that getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night makes you a speed demon or sports superstar. Getting more sleep won’t necessarily make you faster, stronger, or improve your times or performance. Rather, sleep loss is related to physiological reactions, such as autonomic nervous system imbalances, which are similar to overtraining symptoms, such as muscle soreness and increased risk of injury, which can hinder your performance.
Is it better to exercise early in the morning or sleep an hour longer?
Getting enough sleep and regular exercise are important, so how do you decide which one comes first? You really shouldn’t put yourself in this position because you absolutely need both.
But if it’s not possible to find that perfect balance all the time, sleep is always the priority, unless your sleep is almost always of good quality and quantity.
So if you slept seven to eight hours the night before, get up and exercise! But if you’ve gotten less than six hours of sleep most nights of the week, you should probably enjoy that extra hour of sleep. If you skip it, your training will likely be poor anyway.
And if you haven’t slept all night before, choose to sleep. After a sleepless night (or just a few hours of sleep), your body needs rest more than ever.
Bottom line: If you’re not getting the recommended seven or eight hours of sleep a night, you need to reconsider your schedule to make sure that’s the case, and then you need to figure out how to fit it into your regular workouts without sacrificing that. to sleep. You can’t have one without the other. Both are absolutely essential for you to perform at 100%, not only in the gym, but also in your day to day.
* HealthKey strives to convey health knowledge in a language accessible to all. In NO EVENT can the information provided replace the opinion of a health professional.
Well Being3 months ago
