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.
Re: Chad. Doing a traditional “hard” weight or worse, cardio workout in the evening can over stimulate your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight mechanism) which stimulates cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that is normally higher in the a.m. and what wakes us up. So if you are over stimulating cortisol production with a late workout, particularly if you are like many ny’rs and already have autonomic nervous system imbalances (i.e. too much sympathetic not enough parasympathetic), you could be stimulating stress hormones which would definitely keep you up and stressed. You should look into your overall programming and lifestyle, including water intake, nutrient balance and workout intensity to make sure they are all appropriate for your current abilities. If your md says you’re all good, you probably just need to make adjustments specific to your needs.