

RELATED: 7 Surprising Ingredients for a Muscle-Soothing Recovery Bath 3. This can help your body cool down faster and make it easier to sleep. How much you’re sweating or flushing is also a good indicator of just how hot and bothered you’re getting.Ī hot shower or bath after your workout will cause a “rebound effect,” says Stevenson. Light stretching or yoga will have the least effect. Weightlifting exercises that include long rests between sets won’t increase your temp as much as supersetting. So, full-body cardio workouts might be most problematic for your slumber. The intensity, duration, and amount of muscle tissue used in a workout determine how much heat the body produces. After working out, Stevenson says your body has to work to return to its normal temperature, which is going to make falling asleep harder. Stay cool.Ī drop in your body temperature cues sleep, but exercise increases body temperature. So, if you exercise late every night, you may actually snooze better than if you only work out late occasionally. “Biological rhythms are always looking for patterns,” he explains. If you can’t swing mornings, it’s worth making an effort to schedule your workouts at the same time each night, says Stevenson. sleep longer, experience deeper sleep cycles, and spend 75 percent more time in the most reparative stages of slumber than those who exercise at later times that day.” Need a good reason to exercise in the morning? According to the National Sleep Foundation, “People who work out on a treadmill at 7:00 a.m. RELATED: Is It All In Your Gut? The Sleep-Gut Connection 5 Things You Can Do to Prevent Post-Workout Insomnia 1. Follow these tips to prevent your nighttime sweat sesh from keeping you up all night. Stevenson points out that those bright gym lights you work out under are also going to inhibit melatonin production (just like the lights in your house and the blue light from your smartphone). It plays an important role in getting your body the sleep, rest and recovery it needs, and even plays a role in fat loss. “Melatonin is like a master switch,” says Stevenson. At the end of the day, you want your cortisol levels dropping - not rising - because cortisol blocks the production of sleep-triggering melatonin. “Cortisol is bad if it’s produced at the wrong times or in the wrong quantities,” Stevenson explains. But working out also increases cortisol levels - the stress hormone, says Shawn Stevenson, creator and host of The Model Health Show podcast, and author of Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to a Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success. This cocktail of natural chemicals is responsible for that runner’s high you may feel after a workout. If you’re feeling depressed or anxious, exercise also promotes feel-good neurotransmitters, serotonin and norepinephrine, to help relieve feelings of sadness.

When the body is stressed (as in a workout), the brain produces endorphins, which are a natural painkiller. But other factors play a part, like the duration and intensity of the exercise. Sleep experts land somewhere in the middle and suggest that for most people, a couple hours after a workout is enough time to wind down. And isn’t exercising - even at night - better for your sleep than not exercising at all? One survey found that those who work out report having better quality sleep than those who don’t. Some scientific evidence suggests that exercise can keep you up at night, while other sources insist that post-workout insomnia is a total myth. RELATED: 7 Bedtime Rituals to Help Banish Your Insomnia Exercise and Insomnia: What’s the Connection?
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Here’s how to keep those late-night workouts from keeping you up until the wee hours. Regardless of your preferences, sometimes you’ve got no choice but to burn calories while burning the midnight oil. You might be a hardcore a.m workout addict, or maybe you’d rather do burpees for the rest of eternity than rise and shine for early exercise. And the truth is there isn’t a solid formula - it’s whenever you have the time. Everybody’s got a take on the best time of day to work out.
