If you’ve worked out and felt like you needed more sleep, you’re not alone. In fact, many people who have workout schedules that they adhere to regularly feel like they need more rest than others. But is this really the case? Does exercise increase how much sleep we need? If you’re curious to learn more, read on!
We’ll explore the answer to this vital question, including what you need to know about the connections between sleep and exercise. You’ll learn how exercise influences sleep quality, as well as how it impacts sleep duration and how to balance your exercise and sleep for optimal health. Let’s first explore how exercise can influence your sleep quality.
How Exercise Influences Sleep Quality: Do We Need More Quality Rest?
In other articles, we’ve explored the stages of sleep, how optimal sleep helps with recovery from workouts, and how exercise affects sleep in general, but how specifically does exercise influence sleep quality? Studies show that exercise can improve sleep quality, even with just a little bit of a workout each day. Adults who exercise 30 minutes a day can see these benefits. That means whether you’re walking, running, swimming, doing yoga, or anything else, you can see higher quality sleep at night (Source: PubMed).
While there are little to no studies out there that say we need more sleep because we workout regularly, scientists have found that regular aerobic exercises can promote sleep. Even strength training was found to be beneficial for sleep, but it does not mean we need more sleep. On the contrary, exercise helps us sleep better, not makes us sleep more. It can even help with conditions like sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and more. Even if you exercise at night, you can expect to get better quality rest as a result.
So, Do We Need More Sleep When We Exercise or Not?
The short answer is no, we don’t need more rest when we exercise. However, if you are already struggling with getting enough sleep and you start to exercise, you will need more rest. This is especially true if you are an athlete, even at an elite level. Unfortunately, many top-performing athletes still fail to get enough sleep, likely due to their training schedules, which can lead to problems. They can struggle with proper performance and even injury and illness prevention if they do not get enough rest, leading to putting their own competition performance at risk.
We don’t necessarily need more sleep, but we need to mind how much we sleep when exercising. You don’t have to be an elite athlete to require adequate rest. Fortunately, if you do exercise regularly, you might be getting quality rest already because of what exercise does to our bodies and how it helps us stay aligned with our natural circadian rhythms.
Why We Sleep Better If We Exercise or Workout Regularly
You might wonder why we rest better if we exercise or work out regularly and why we need sleep after working out. There are a few reasons you should know about, including how our sleep is beneficial for our muscle recovery and repair.
When you work out or exercise, regardless of the type you engage in, you’re breaking apart muscles and often tearing the muscle fibers, which then will be repaired and recover even stronger than before during your sleep. We need sleep because it promotes memory consolidation and learning and also helps the body heal and restore itself (Source: PubMed). So, in short, we sleep so that we can recover, repair our muscles, and hit the gym the next day with the ability to boost our strength even more.
However, why do we sleep better if we exercise or workout regularly? Exercising can help our bodies stay healthy and remove toxins while also allowing us to get stronger. We sleep better after we work out because our bodies produce melatonin, and exercise helps with this. Exercise can also help with things like stress reduction, improved moods, and even body temperature regulation (Source: PubMed). Essentially, physical activity is one way to regulate our sleep-wake cycles, so we sleep better when we are more active.
Tips for Balancing Exercise and Sleep for Optimal Health
If you’re looking for some tips to help balance exercise and sleep as an athlete or someone living a healthy lifestyle, there are many things you can do in the future to help. Most importantly, it’s about finding the schedule and structure that works for you. In most cases, you will require seven to nine hours of sleep, but how much you’ll thrive on depends on you. You can take steps to find out how much exercise and sleep work for you to help you feel your best.
Additionally, if you do have vigorous training regimens, take time to recover. You should not be working out too much that you fail to recover. Remember: resting is an activity in itself, so you have to take time to heal, allow your muscles to repair, and enjoy life! When it comes to sleep, you can integrate relaxation techniques into your day to help you improve your sleep onset, such as deep breathing exercises or even meditation.
If you really want to enjoy proper rest, avoid strenuous workouts within an hour before bed. Even if you fail to have the time to work out during the day, it is not always a good idea to get that hard gym session in right before you get some shuteye. As long as you do this, you can ensure you get quality rest and don’t hurt your own training and competition, too.
Take Steps to Prioritize Sleep and Rest After Exercise
Just because we don’t need more sleep means that we shouldn’t prioritize our rest and recovery after we exercise. We hope that you learned something new in our article! By following some of the tips we have provided, you can effectively balance sleep and exercise and live a healthy lifestyle. As long as you prioritize exercise and sleep based on how you feel, you’ll enjoy a vibrant, active lifestyle in the future.
