As nice as that sounds, in the real world, the two are often in direct conflict. Is it better to set your alarm an hour earlier to squeeze in a morning run, or catch up on sleep? “For many people, there's this very explicit trade between sleep and exercise,” says Emily Capodilupo, senior vice president of research, algorithms, and data at the wearable company Whoop. “You have a number of essentially unfungible commitments during the day, and then sleep and exercise come from your ‘free time.’”
The good news is there might be more wiggle room than previously thought. “The narrative has shifted from, ‘Don't exercise at night,’ to ‘Well, it might just be the type of workout right before bedtime that's bad,’" says exercise physiologist Rachelle Acitelli Reed.
Meanwhile, an easy jog or yoga session had minimal effects—and sometimes even helped people sleep better. “You're not getting your heart rate up enough to get too warm and get overactivated, but you do have a chance to process the day and create that space to zone out,” says Capodilupo, one of the co-authors of the Whoop study.
Different people react differently
It’s not just the type of exercise that matters; it’s also the person. In the study of Whoop users, while the average response to strenuous evening exercise was a worse night of sleep, individual outcomes varied.
Another factor is personal preference. Night owls, for instance, sometimes find late workouts helpful, Matsumura says. “They feel subjectively like it benefits them.”
Earlier workouts might even give sleep a small boost. One 2022 study found that just 10 minutes of light physical activity in the morning helped men sleep a few minutes longer compared to men who didn’t exercise in the morning, and women’s sleep became a tiny bit more efficient when they did a light workout either in the morning or (to a lesser extent) the afternoon. A small 2014 study on people with higher than average blood pressure also found that 7 a.m. cardio sessions led to a greater dip in nocturnal blood pressure and more time spent in deep sleep.
Don’t let a late workout derail your sleep
If the only time you have to exercise is shortly before bed, don’t assume your sleep is doomed. “The sleep-disturbing effect is not like, ‘And then you get no sleep.’ It's like, ‘Your sleep's a bit less efficient,’” Capodilupo says. She suggests thinking of a hard evening workout as putting you on a trajectory toward disrupted sleep. But there's a lot you can do to change course.
A healthy post-workout meal can also be a good idea. If you burn off so much glucose that you end up in a carb-depleted state, and then you don’t refuel, your body will have to tap into your fat stores to maintain your blood sugar overnight. “The way that we access fat requires the release of cortisol—our stress hormone—and that wakes you up, especially in that 2 to 5 a.m. window,” Capodilupo says. To avoid this, sports dietitians recommend having food with both carbs and protein after working out, like a turkey sandwich or some yogurt and granola.
The bottom line
Of course, sleep isn’t the only factor to consider. You also have to think about when you’re actually going to get in a good workout—and stay consistent with it. For some, it feels nearly impossible to exercise before 9 a.m.; others are drained by the end of the day. “I fully believe that, yeah, my sleep might be better if I worked out at 5 a.m. instead of 7:30 at night,” Capodilupo says. “But that would end up with me aspiring to wake up at 5—but actually never working out.”
She encourages people to keep the bigger picture in mind: Research consistently shows that regular exercise will lead to better sleep overall. “In the aggregate,” Capodilupo says, “it might actually be good for you to give up a little bit of sleep tonight to have a good workout.” A few minutes of tossing and turning one or two nights a week might just be the price you pay for getting better sleep in the long run.
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