Good Sweat
Sleep tight: Why working out late can keep you awake
Today Well+Good kicks off Sleep Week. We’ll present five well-being perspectives on getting quality zzz’s—from what time of day to workout to what mattress to sleep on.
“In an ideal world, you should probably work-out before 2:00 p.m.,” says Geralyn Coopersmith, the trainer’s trainer at Equinox. Author of Fit + Female, The Perfect Fitness and Nutrition Game Plan for Your Unique Body Type, Coopersmith has an masters degree in exercise physiology from Columbia University and she runs Equinox’s in-house education, keeping up on the latest exercise research and teaching it to the gym’s 1,400 trainers. “There’s a connection between lower body temperature and getting quality sleep,” Coopersmith explains, “Exercise raises body temperature and revs up the metabolism. It’s a good thing in terms of burning calories, but it’s not great if you want to relax and fall asleep.”
Coopersmith doesn't know any New Yorkers who get the necessary 7-9 hours of sleep.
For a fit person, the body can learn to adjust to a p.m. workout. Coopersmith believes consistency in evening workouts is why all those regular gym-goers get good sleep. For a less conditioned person, the body takes longer to cool down, so those evening workouts can translate into a sheep-counting session that night. (With a hot bath, body temperature only rises temporarily as a result of the environment; exercise’s metabolic temperature spike lasts much longer.)
If you find yourself with only an evening slot for a workout, Coopersmith suggests yoga, Pilates, or Tai Chi. “These forms of exercise take you into a parasympathetic state—the flip side of the fight or flight stage. So if it’s 7:00, choose something other than cardio and weight training.” Coopersmith cites a recent study that compared people doing a stretching program with people doing an intense cardio workout and how quickly each group feel asleep. The results: the stretchers slept while the cardio warriors tossed and turned.
Bottom line for New Yorkers who can’t sleep: Set your alarm clock for your cardio boot camp, jogs, and spin classes; and plan to do yoga or Pilates for those days when after-work working out is the only option.
What time of day do you workout? Have you noticed any effect, positive or negative, on your sleep? Tell us, here!
I work out in the evening (8:30 to 10 roughly) during the week, and don’t find that it keeps me up. Maybe, as Coopersmith notes, the consistency of a routine is more important than the time in my case. I’d like to be one of those people who gets to the gym in the morning just because then I have a better outlook on the day, but I can’t sustain getting up even earlier for more than a few days.
I find when I work out to late in the day that can’t fall a sleep. This presses on into the evening and causes me to start a panic attack, I have talk to my doctor and he sais that everything checks out (blood work and the hole 9). Have you ever heard of this before? I am concerned to continue working out thinking that it might be triggering an under laying medical condition. Know this is normal would certainly make me feel better.
I definitely notice a difference the one night a week I work out from 6:30 to 8:30. I’m a lousy sleeper in general but get less sleep that one night because I’m so keyed up and even tho I’m tired, I’m wide awake. The 3 days I work out in the morning, my workouts are better and so is my sleep.
Note to Chad: you might want to ask your doctor if you should wear a heart monitor for 24 hours, which should include your workout during that period. I was having a similar experience; the monitor detected a minor problem.
Great to know about the heart monitor, Claudette! Thanks for the tip.