How three-minute bouts of exercise several hours before bed can boost your quality of sleep

If you’re hoping to drift off into a long slumber, doing anything that requires movement may be the last thing on your mind.

But a study appears to show doing some exercise in the hours before going to bed could help you sleep better.

Researchers found short bursts of resistance workouts – such as chair squats and calf raises – every half an hour before bed improved sleep length by 27 minutes.

Current recommendations discourage intense exercise before winding down for the night, on the grounds that it increases body temperature and heart rate.

But the findings suggest it might not be so bad. Researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand recruited 30 participants aged 18 to 40 for their study.

Current recommendations discourage intense exercise before winding down for the night, on the grounds that it increases body temperature and heart rate (file image)

The findings seem to show evening exercise does not disrupt sleep quality, despite current sleep recommendations to the contrary (file image)

 All of them reported clocking up more than five hours of sedentary time during the day at work and two hours in the evening.

Each participant completed two sessions in a laboratory, starting at around 5pm.

In one session, they remained seated for four hours while in the other, they did three minutes of simple resistance exercises every 30 minutes over the four hours.

Each activity break included three rounds of exercises – chair squats, calf raises and standing knee raises with straight leg hip extensions – for 20 seconds each.

Before the experiment, participants spent an average of seven hours and 47 minutes asleep. 

But analysis revealed that after the activity breaks, they slept for an additional 27 minutes on average, compared with the other session.

There were also no significant differences in sleep efficiency – meaning participants did not wake up any more during the night after completing the exercise.

While activity breaks can improve metabolism after a meal, it was not previously clear if they had any impact on sleep. 

Poor sleep is associated with an increased risk of cardiometabolic disorders, such as coronary heart disease.

Writing in the journal BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, the team said: ‘These results add to a growing body of evidence that indicates evening exercise does not disrupt sleep quality, despite current sleep recommendations to the contrary.’