While evening exercise can enhance sleep quality, current guidelines discourage it before bed. The impact of regular evening activity breaks on sleep remains uncertain, requiring further research.
A recent randomized crossover study published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine examined if 3-minute evening resistance exercise breaks improve sleep compared to prolonged sitting.
For the trial, researchers studied the effects of evening activity breaks on sleep and physical activity in 30 adults between the ages of 18-40 years old. Participants were non-smokers, medication-free, and had high sedentary time. They wore an ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometer for seven days to monitor activity and sleep and kept a diary for accuracy.
The participants underwent two 4-hour evening sessions: one with prolonged sitting and the other with 3-minute resistance exercise breaks every 30 minutes. Sessions occurred on Tuesdays or Thursdays, with a minimum six-day washout period.
The results were surprising. Pre-intervention data showed participants averaged 7 hours and 47 minutes of sleep, 10 hours and 31 minutes of sedentary time, and 4 hours and 55 minutes of physical activity daily. Seventy-five percent had optimal sleep duration, 21% were short sleepers, and 4% were long sleepers.
The exercise breaks increased sleep period by approximately 30 minutes compared to prolonged sitting. No significant differences were found in sleep efficiency, wake after sleep onset (WASO), or awakenings.
Health benefits of the exercise breaks included longer total sleep time and increased sleep period, with slight, non-significant decreases in sedentary time.
Assessing the impact of evening resistance exercise breaks on sleep quality and physical activity, the investigators found that regular evening activity breaks significantly improved sleep duration without disrupting sleep quality or subsequent physical activity thus supporting that evening exercise does not impair sleep quality and can be integrated into routines to enhance sleep duration and potentially improve long-term health.
JT Gale et al. Evening regular activity breaks extend subsequent free-living sleep time in healthy adults: a randomised crossover trial. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine (2024). https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2023-001774
