The best exercises to do if you want a good night's sleep

Telegraph

2 days ago

Sleep comes easily to me: in meetings, while filling out online forms, at the ballet, when anyone explains anything connected with personal finance. However, once in bed, a lot of this natural gift leaves me. You will often find me pointlessly lively between 3am and 4am, having woken up half-bonkers with worries about anything from roof repairs to our purpose on earth.
One thing that has always helped is my sessions lifting weights in the gym. There is something uniquely exhausting about strength training and, at 61, I now do something taxing with my muscles at least three times a week. These are the nights when my wake-ups are less disturbing and finding the door that leads back to dreamland is easier.
And now it seems that science is on my side. Newly published analysis carried out in Mahidol University, Bangkok, found that among older people (the over-60s) with insomnia, strength training – lifting, pushing and pulling – is superior to aerobic work as a means of improving slumber.
One theory behind this is that tensing and relaxing our muscles may resemble a classic and very effective late-night sleep technique.
Why is strength training so helpful for sleeplessness?
Prof Kevin Morgan of the Loughborough University Clinical Sleep Research Unit has been working on sleep for decades. He says progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) – the scrunching and relaxing of muscle groups across the body, is much like the action we perform while resistance training.
The technique involves clenching, holding and unclenching muscle groups. Recommended by the NHS, among others, the process can start at the feet, move up to the calves and culminate at the head, for example, leaving us loose and open to sleep. It was developed in the US at the start of last century and is now common practice as a remedy for insomnia.
Prof Morgan speculates that weight training may mimic the effect of PMR (each exertion is a brief hold, tense and release) and suggests that if you wanted to maximise this, it may be worth working the larger muscle groups. Once this is completed, he says, 'bigger muscles may be more relaxed than they otherwise would be'.
Why timing is so important
If you want to maximise the power of your resistance training as a sleep aid, it's worth thinking carefully about timing your sessions in a regular slot every day. Because exercise is such a powerful body-clock leader, picking a time and sticking to it is more important than when you do it. Sleep scientists have discovered that muscles contain their own circadian clocks and that exercise, along with light and food, is one of the ways our bodies orient themselves in time.
Prof Morgan says, if you want better sleep, 'do exercise at a regular time and that will provide your circadian rhythm (your internal alarm clock) with a timing cue, so when you're lying in bed your body now knows it's night-time.' A study carried out by Dalian University, China, found movement can be a truly effective way of establishing healthy sleep patterns. 'Exercise can regulate the body's internal rhythms to a certain extent, making it possible to become a non-drug intervention for preventing and treating circadian rhythm disorders.'