Moving and Sleeping

You ever have those days where you had a full schedule, worked really hard, moved around a lot and hit the gym? What happens at night on those days? For me, I can barely stay up after dinner. I head to bed early and crash hard. Those nights are always filled with great sleep.

A new study showed that the more active you are during the day, the better you’ll sleep at night. It wasn’t tracking planned, intense exercise. In fact, some studies report that can hinder sleep. Instead, this study looked at walking throughout the day, or what I think of as non-exercise physical activity.

The participants wore a monitor and tracked daily movement and filled out a self-assessing questionnaire each morning about sleep quality. According to the researchers, the more people move, the better they sleep.

The more ground they covered, the better they slept. Especially on days that they hit a higher than average step count. If you’ve ever been on vacation when you’ve walked around a lot, you know what I’m talking about. Now remember, this isn’t saying the more you walk, the more you sleep. But there seems to be evidence that the more activity you get, the more you’ll want to sleep.

If I were someone who struggles with sleeping each night, I’d try to increase my activity level - not through working out more, but trying to walk and move more throughout the day.

If you want to read the article, check it out here

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach