When it comes to exercising, you know that what you do in the gym is crucially important. However, what you do outside the gym — in other words, what you eat, what you drink and especially how you sleep – is just as important. In fact, you need to sleep in order for exercise to really work.
We exercise for a purpose. These include:
- For cardiovascular health,
- To increase lean muscle mass, and
- To improve endurance.
All of these fitness goals require sleep. In other words, without proper amounts of quality sleep, exercise does not deliver those benefits. If you don’t sleep, you undercut your body.
Sleep gives your body the time which it desperately needs to recover, conserve energy as well as repair and build up the muscles that are worked during exercise. When we get sufficient amounts of good-quality sleep, the body creates growth hormone. During childhood as well as adolescence, growth hormone makes us grow. And when we are older, grow hormone assists us with building lean muscle. It also helps our body repair when we have torn ourselves up during a hard workout. Growth hormone is essential for athletic recovery.
How Does Exercise Help Sleep?
Regular exercise, specifically in the morning or afternoon, can have an impact on your sleep quality. This is achieved by increasing your body temperature a few degrees. Later in the day, when your internal thermometer drops back to its normal range, this process can trigger feelings of drowsiness and assist you with dropping off to sleep. Also, if you exercise outdoors, you’ll be exposed to natural light, an important element in helping your body establish a good sleep-wake cycle.
Exercise Improves Sleep Quality
Exercise can contribute to more sound as well as restful sleep. Physical activity increases the time, which is spent in deep sleep, which is the most physically-restorative sleep phase. Deep sleep assists with boosting immune function, support cardiac health in addition to controlling stress and anxiety.
Physical Activity Increases Sleep Amounts
In addition to enhancing the quality of sleep, exercise can also assist you with increasing the duration of your nightly rest. This is because being physically active requires you to spend energy, and helps you feel more tired – as well as ready – to rest at the end of the day. Research indicates that exercise—in particular, regular exercise that’s part of a consistent routine—can assist with boosting sleep duration in addition to sleep quality.
How Much Should You Exercise?
If you strive to do about 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise every single week, you’ll help to improve your sleep quality as well as meet the guidelines for physical activity. This works out to about half an hour, five times a week. If you can’t fit that much in even just 10 minutes a day of walking, swimming or biking can improve your nightly sleep.
Contact Trifocus Fitness Academy
Exercise has loads more benefits than just improving sleep. These benefits are something that a personal trainer can teach you. An even better idea is to become a personal trainer yourself! Follow this link to find out how you can do this.