Sick of the office routine: how exercise can be perfect way to round off a stressful day.

In our first article about Exercise, we showed you how regular daily exercise is hugely beneficial to our physical and mental health. Given that all the fitness centres and sports complexes are currently closed and that we are still having to work from home, it’s not always easy to achieve the recommended level of activity (at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day).

Today’s article again features exercise tips to enable you to incorporate more physical activity into your daily routine and, in addition, improve the quality of your sleep.

There is a two-way relationship between quality of sleep and daily physical activity. Various studies have shown that exercise has a positive effect on the quality of our sleep. Adequate physical activity (following recommendations) during the day shortens the time it takes to fall asleep and reduces the number of times we wake up during the night. We thereby start the day more alert and feel less tired during the day. Conversely, more recent studies have shown that poor quality sleep results in less physical activity in our daily lives. In a nutshell: if we get adequate exercise, we sleep better. If we sleep better, we exercise more. (Kline, 2015, Wang and Boros, 2019, Plekhanova et al., 2020)

How can we use exercise to improve our sleep?

Basically, there are three things we need to bear in mind when planning our daily exercise if we want to optimise our sleep: the type of exercise, its intensity and the time of day we take exercise.

When during the day should I exercise if I want to sleep better?

From a scientific perspective, there is no ideal universal time at which physical exercise will have a positive impact on our sleep. The optimum time for sport is much more dependent on our own chronotype (night owl, early bird), age and any illness we may be suffering from. Having said that, you should avoid moderate and more intense exercise for at least 90 minutes before going to bed. This allows your body temperature and endorphin level to return to a normal level, thereby promoting recuperative sleep. The more intense the exercise, the earlier in the evening it should be taken to leave enough time for your body to cool down and your mind to relax. (Vitale et al.,2017, Miller et al., 2020, Burgees et al., 2020)

What kind of sport and intensity level will boost my sleep?

During the day, you can undertake any type and intensity of exercise/sport to optimise your sleep provided you can achieve the recommended amount of exercise. Both endurance training and strength training or other types of sport have a positive impact on our sleep. (Burgees et al., 2020)

However, just before going to bed, it is well worth only undertaking sports and exercises of a lower intensity and which are calming. This keeps the body temperature down and we can relax, thereby preparing ourselves for imminent sleep. Gentle yoga moves, simple stretching and mobilisation exercises or breathing practices are ideal (see article). (Kredlow et al., 2015, Ebrahimi, Guilan-Nejad, Pordanjani, 2017, Wang and Boros, 2019)

An overview of the key points: