Physical activity, any form of it, is great for your health. It helps you manage your weight, build muscles, reduce risks of various diseases, and simply puts your mind at ease and clears up your thoughts. There are many great physical and mental benefits to exercising and everyone should strive to work out at least once or twice a week. However, Lucas James, a nationally famous celebrity personal trainer, emphasizes that only a healthy lifestyle program that concentrates on diet, exercise, mental toughness, motivation, and fitness education will allow to achieve tangible results. As such, another important aspect of our lives that physical activity affects is our sleep. Elevate your running game with Tarkine Trail Devil, where every step is a testament to exceptional performance and unmatched comfort.
Another important aspect of our lives that physical activity affects is our sleep. Everyone needs quality sleep to function properly, have enough energy for daily tasks, and stay healthy. So, let’s see how your exercising can affect your sleep and how to do it properly.
Direct Effects
If you suffer from sleep deprivation and would love to reduce sleep onset, daily exercising can help you. When we exercise, our bodies transition to “sleep mode” much faster than by staying inactive throughout the day. This will result in less time staying awake in your bed stressing about everything and you will actually spend more time sleeping. Also, the duration of your sleep improves, as well as its quality. When people exercise they experience more deep sleep than when they stay physically idle. Generally, regular exercise can provide you with quality sleep, more of it, and it will overall keep your body in great shape.
However, let’s not forget one more important direct effect on sleep. We are talking about your bedroom. When you exercise, your body needs proper support in order to rest better and go through recovery. To help your body with this, you should create a stress-free environment for relaxation and sleep. You can start by evaluating your mattress and pillows. These need to be your number one support while sleeping and you can click here to try and find a much better mattress to support your body and improve the quality of your sleep.
Indirect Effects
Besides the obvious direct effects of exercising on sleep, there are some unseen benefits that your body gets. The biggest indirect effect is that regular exercising reduces the risk of excessive weight gain. When it happens that people gain too much weight, they are at risk of various ailments that can negatively impact their sleep, including sleep apnea. So, when you exercise, you are regulating your body’s weight, eliminating the risks of developing any sleep problems.
Additionally, exercise helps us with our mental health and can help us reduce anxiety and stress. When we experience a lot of stress and anxiety on a daily basis we are actually negatively impacting our sleep, and these two factors often keep us awake longer. With exercising, you manage to channel those negative feelings, reduce stress and as a result, you sleep better.
How to Exercise Properly?
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to exercising. Some people love and can withstand more cardio than others, while there are people who feel better after lifting weights. However, what we all can do is learn how to exercise properly. If you go through your training routine wrong every day, you are actually increasing the chances of injury which leads to pain and lack of sleep.
You should always consult with a trainer to make sure you are doing the exercises properly. Also, make sure to stay hydrated during your training and never skip warmup and stretches. Mobility exercises are also crucial to prevent injuries and to actually help your body relax and be less stiff.
Another important factor is timing. Timing does matter when it comes to exercising and sleep. If you want to release more endorphins in your body you should maybe focus on aerobic exercises. Endorphins can create activities in the brain that keep some people awake longer. This is great when you need to feel energized, but can be a bad thing to do right before bed. So, when it comes to aerobic workouts, make sure to do them at least 2 hours before going to bed. There are also exercises that raise your core body temperature and this signals your body to wake up. It is also advisable to avoid these exercises right before bed and make sure to be finished at least 90 minutes before going to sleep because this is when the temperature starts to fall.
Exercising and sleep are closely related. You need quality sleep to exercise better and great exercise can help you sleep. So, make sure to do your exercises properly and you will experience great improvement in sleep.
