Sleep and exercise might appear to coexist peacefully. Research shows that working out regularly can help you fall asleep faster and get deeper sleep, while better sleep can lead to more effective workouts, faster recovery afterward, and a lower risk of injury.
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.’”
Many of us head to the gym after work to skip that early morning wake-up. But for years, sleep experts have said that’s a risky move, since a tough workout raises your core body temperature along with your heart rate and blood pressure, and it releases adrenaline while inhibiting the production of the sleepy hormone melatonin—all changes that can leave you wide awake.
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.
Intensity matters
Whether or not a late exercise session will mess with your sleep largely depends on how hard it is. A 2018 meta-analysis in Sports Medicine found that exercise in the hour before bed needed to reach a vigorous level before it interfered with most people’s sleep. An observational study in 2025 looking at more than 14,000 Whoop members found that the higher the intensity and the longer the duration of late-in-the-day training, the more wired it generally made people feel.
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.
Sleep physician Dr. Andrea Matsumura, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, recommends taking an after-dinner walk as part of your wind-down routine. This habit can lower your blood pressure, a signal of a relaxed nervous system. Low-intensity exercise can also use up extra carbs after a big meal so that your body isn’t spending the night converting them into glycogen (the stored form of glucose) or fat, which Capodilupo says is “a pretty active state that is bad for sleep.”
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.
One factor is a person’s fitness level. People who are more out of shape can take over an hour to return to baseline after getting their heart rate up high, Capodilupo says. But a fit person can complete their post-workout recovery process—which can keep them awake—faster.
Another factor is personal preference. Night owls, for instance, sometimes find late workouts helpful, Matsumura says. “They feel subjectively like it benefits them.”
What about morning and midday workouts?
If you want to be sure a tough exercise session won’t keep you up, you’ll likely want to get it in earlier in the day. Whoop’s study found that regardless of how hard or how long a workout was, as long as it ended at least four hours before bedtime, it didn’t disrupt that night’s sleep.
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.
If you want it to help even more, consider taking your daytime workout outdoors. Exposure to sunlight—particularly in the morning—is linked to higher quality 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.
Sleep physician Dr. Cheri D. Mah coaches professional athletes, who often have to play evening games. Her advice after games is to practice breathing exercises, which activate the parasympathetic “rest-and-digest” system that primes the body for sleep. She also recommends developing a wind-down routine with activities including light yoga, reading a book, or journaling, while dimming the lights and avoiding screens and other stimulating activities. Even if something like a 10-minute meditation means you hop into bed later, getting the body into a calm state can help you fall asleep faster once you’re actually between the sheets, Capodilupo adds.
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
Figuring out the ideal workout timing for your sleep is really about listening to your body’s cues. “I always tell my patients, ‘You know yourself the best,’” Matsumura says. If you’re not sure whether your after-work fitness classes are the reason you’re lying awake at night, Reed suggests performing your own experiment, seeing how your body responds to consistently exercising at a different time of day for a couple of weeks.
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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