{"id":608359,"date":"2026-04-27T00:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T00:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/608359\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T00:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T00:38:09","slug":"the-best-time-to-exercise-before-bed-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/608359\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Time to Exercise Before Bed"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some logical things we know to be true: working out<\/a> is tiring. And being tired helps you fall asleep<\/a>. But exercise before bed<\/a> can sometimes have the opposite effect. I have personal experience with this: At one point I was attending a kickboxing<\/a> class after work at least two nights a week. They were the kind of sessions where you were gasping, willing the seconds to tick by so you could stop and rest. I was all showered<\/a> and changed by 8:30 p.m. and tucked into bed<\/a> by 11:30 p.m., where I’d lie wide awake, humming with unwanted energy.<\/p>\n

The relationship between exercise<\/a> and sleep<\/a> is a complicated one, so I consulted experts to see what they have to say about the best time to exercise before bed. Professor Kevin Morgan<\/a> founded the Loughborough University Clinical Sleep Research Unit 20 years ago and has made sleep<\/a> the focus of his work. He says many elite athletes<\/a> are not experiencing the deep slumber you would imagine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAthletes sleep badly, elite athletes sleep worst of all, their bodies ache, their muscles twitch, they\u2019re kind of wired people anyway,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cThe route to good sleep is not to train like an elite athlete<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guidance around when to exercise before bed depends on two factors; the intensity and regularity of your workout. Professor Morgan confirms my post martial-arts insomnia was not unusual: exercises destroy your ability to doze off.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely intense levels of activity are not the path to great sleep,\u201d Morgan says. \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for people with chronic insomnia<\/a> who say \u2018I\u2019ve tried everything\u2019 to include in \u2018everything\u2019 intense activity. The relationship between sleep and exercise is not linear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan says the research about when to\u00a0exercise has shifted slightly. The rule has traditionally been to avoid exerting yourself for three hours before attempting sleep, but now it\u2019s thought more gentle activity can be carried out much later.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a serious runner<\/a> and you\u2019re going to do 10K, you\u2019re best not doing it an hour before you go to bed,\u201d says Morgan. \u201cIt will take that long for your body to cool down<\/a>\u2014but something more modest will not do you any harm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johan Meurling<\/a>, consultant sleep and respiratory physician at Guy\u2019s and St Thomas\u2019 NHS Trust in London adds that one of the reasons exercise can keep you up has to do with our sympathetic nervous system, a network of nerves responsible for our \u201cfight-or-flight\u201d response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are some logical things we know to be true: working out is tiring. And being tired helps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[14125,2750,2752,337,97,2749,2748,2514,2751,673],"class_list":{"0":"post-608359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-_seo","9":"tag-cardio","10":"tag-digital_syndication","11":"tag-fitness","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-longevity","14":"tag-sleep-and-recovery","15":"tag-strength-training","16":"tag-textbelowcentergridwidth","17":"tag-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}