For many individuals, achieving truly restful sleep is increasingly elusive in the modern world. Sleep disturbances are incredibly common, with insomnia affecting a significant portion of the population. Indeed, it’s estimated that 10% to 30% of people struggle with insomnia, but rates reach as high as 60% in certain groups.1
Inadequate sleep not only impairs cognitive functions, such as attention and memory, but also takes a toll on your physical health, social interactions and overall psychological well-being. Fortunately, exercise is a powerful, natural ally in the quest for better sleep.
As a study published in npj Biological Timing and Sleep points out, physical activity has positive effects on sleep quality and duration.2 Understanding the role of exercise for a good night’s sleep is particularly important for those seeking non-pharmaceutical approaches to enhance their rest.
Exercise Is a Natural Way to Enhance Your Sleep
A 2025 narrative review published in npj Biological Timing and Sleep explored the intricate connection between exercise and sleep, including for those struggling with sleep disorders. It considered various types of exercise, ranging from your everyday brisk walk to more intense workouts, and examined their effects on sleep quality, duration and the troubles that come with sleep disorders.
The research consistently shows that exercise is not just about building muscle or losing weight; it’s a powerful tool that significantly enhances your sleep health. Specifically, the review highlights that regular exercise leads to noticeable improvements in how well and how long people sleep. Further, even a small amount of daily exercise makes a difference in sleep duration.
For instance, female adults battling insomnia who committed to just 30 minutes of daily exercise found themselves gaining approximately 15 extra minutes of sleep each night, compared to those who remained inactive. Beyond time asleep, the study emphasized that exercise is particularly effective at tackling common sleep challenges such as insomnia, excessive daytime sleepiness, and sleep apnea.
The review highlighted moderate-intensity aerobic exercise as a particularly beneficial form of activity for sleep improvement. In fact, insomnia patients who engaged in moderate aerobic workouts for 30 minutes, three times a week over eight weeks, experienced a tangible boost in their sleep quality. This means consistent, moderate activity, like a brisk walk or a bike ride, could be just what you need to start seeing improvements in your nightly rest.
How exactly does exercise work its sleep-enhancing magic? According to the review, several key mechanisms are at play. Exercise boosts the production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycles and also has anticancer effects. Think of melatonin as your body’s natural sleep aid — and exercise helps to ramp up its production.
Further, exercise is a known stress reducer, and stress is a notorious sleep saboteur. By lowering stress levels, exercise helps to clear a major hurdle to falling and staying asleep. Lastly, exercise assists in regulating your body temperature, which is also essential for initiating sleep.
The natural dip in body temperature that occurs after exercise promotes sleepiness, making it easier for you to drift off into a peaceful night’s rest. With these multiple pathways — melatonin boost, stress reduction, and body temperature regulation — it’s clear that exercise is far more than just a way to burn calories; it’s a holistic approach to improving your overall health, with the welcome side effect of better sleep.
Exercise Helps Sync Your Body Clock for Better Health
A 2023 comprehensive review published in Frontiers in Pharmacology explored how exercise helps regulate your body’s internal clock, known as the circadian rhythm. Exercise interacts with your body’s natural timekeeping system, which is important for many aspects of health, from sleep to hormone regulation and even disease prevention.
It highlights that just like sunlight, exercise is a key “zeitgeber” — a fancy term for an environmental cue that helps set and reset your body clock, ensuring everything runs on schedule.
The researchers explained that your body’s biological clock isn’t just about sleep; it’s a master coordinator for countless bodily functions — an internal conductor leading an orchestra of biological processes that repeat roughly every 24 hours.
This includes your sleep-wake cycle, blood pressure fluctuations, hormone release and even heart rate variations. When this internal clock gets out of sync with your external environment — like the day-night cycle — it throws your whole system off balance.
Long-term disruptions to your circadian rhythm have been linked to serious health problems, including heart issues, metabolic disorders like diabetes, mental health conditions and even cancer. The review highlights that exercise timing plays a key role in influencing your circadian rhythm, acting as a time cue that either advances or delays your body clock, much like adjusting the hands on a watch.
The review points out that exercise done at night tends to push your clock later, making it harder to fall asleep and wake up early. This is because nighttime exercise delays the release of melatonin and increases alertness when your body should be winding down for rest. Therefore, if you’re struggling to fall asleep at night, consider adjusting your workout schedule to avoid intense evening sessions.
However, the impact of exercise on your body clock isn’t as straightforward during the daytime, according to the review. While nighttime exercise seems to consistently delay the circadian rhythm, the effects of daytime exercise are more varied and depend on several factors, such as the intensity, type and duration of your workout, as well as your individual body clock and lifestyle.
Interestingly, the review mentions that midday to afternoon exercise is associated with a lower risk of death from all causes and specifically from cardiovascular disease, while morning exercise is linked to a decreased risk of cancer and better lipid metabolism.
This suggests that while the timing of exercise affects sleep in certain ways, there could be different optimal times for other health benefits, like protecting your heart. Overall, the review emphasizes that regular exercise, regardless of the specific time, is important for maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm and overall well-being.
Exercise Links Your Heart Health to Your Body Clock
An editorial published in Acta Cardiologica Sinica investigated the connection between your body’s natural clock, exercise and the health of your heart.3 In short, both your internal clock and your exercise habits are involved in maintaining a healthy heart and preventing cardiovascular diseases. According to the editorial, exercise is a signal that fine-tunes your internal circadian clock.
Properly timed exercise actually shifts your circadian phase, meaning it influences when you feel most awake and when you’re ready to sleep. This is important because your circadian rhythm isn’t just about sleep; it’s deeply involved in how your heart functions day and night. Interestingly, the paper points out that even melatonin plays a role in heart health, especially in the context of exercise.
One study mentioned in the paper found that melatonin could help decrease oxidative stress in the heart caused by intense exercise and help restore energy levels in heart tissue after acute exercise.4 Oxidative stress is like rust in your body, damaging cells and contributing to heart problems.
Melatonin, closely tied to your circadian rhythm, appears to offer a protective effect, helping to balance the stress that intense physical activity puts on your heart. This insight further strengthens the connection between your body clock, exercise, and heart health.
The review concludes by emphasizing that the strong interplay between circadian rhythm and exercise is key for your heart health. This means that to truly maximize the heart-healthy benefits of exercise, you need to consider not only what type of exercise you’re doing and how often, but also when you’re doing it in relation to your body’s natural rhythms.
While more research is needed to pinpoint the exact timing and types of exercise that are most beneficial for heart health in relation to circadian rhythm, the existing evidence makes it clear: integrating regular, well-timed physical activity into your life is a powerful strategy for supporting a healthy heart through the modulation of your body’s innate daily rhythms.
Simple Steps to Exercise Your Way to Better Sleep
If you’re looking to harness the power of exercise for better sleep, here are a few straightforward steps to make it a reality. These are simple changes, but they make a profound difference in how you rest and recharge each night. Let’s get started on your path to better sleep through exercise.
1. Make walking your daily go-to exercise — Walking is free, accessible and the best part is you already know how to do it. While even short walks are great, gradually work your way up to about an hour total each day. This hour doesn’t have to be all at once, however. A 20-minute walk in the morning, another after lunch and perhaps one more in the evening add up and make exercise feel less like a chore and more like a natural part of your routine.
2. Embrace strength training — If you haven’t already, consider making strength training a regular part of your exercise plan. Aim for 30 to 60 minutes of strength training per week. Focus on working all the major muscle groups — legs, arms, back, chest and core. Even using your own body weight for exercises like squats, push-ups and planks is effective.
3. Engage in daily movement and avoid overexercising — Your body is designed for movement, so incorporate physical activity into your day, every day. However, it’s just as important to be smart about how intensely you exercise.
While most people don’t exercise enough, when it comes to vigorous exercise and strength training, too much will backfire, resulting in higher mortality risk than had you trained less. But when it comes to moderate exercise, like walking, dancing and gardening, just to name a few, you cannot overdo it, and the more active you are, the greater your benefits.
4. Time your exercise for circadian harmony — Be mindful of when you exercise, taking your chronotype — whether you’re a morning or evening person — into account. For morning types, nighttime exercise elevates cardiovascular risks, likely due to misalignment with their natural rhythms.
Conversely, evening types face heightened risks with early morning activity.5 Experiment with different exercise times to see what works best for your sleep and energy levels, but generally, avoiding vigorous workouts right before bed is a good rule of thumb for sleep.
5. Optimize your sleep hygiene for a full night’s rest — Beyond exercise, to promote better sleep think about your sleep environment and bedtime routine. Be sure your bedroom is completely dark when you go to bed, as even the smallest amount of light, whether it’s from a night light, a street lamp peeking through the curtains or the glow of your alarm clock, interferes with your internal clock and reduces your melatonin production.
In the morning, make sure you get bright sunlight exposure, which is a strong signal to your body that it’s time to wake up and get your day started, helping to regulate your circadian rhythm. Then, as evening approaches and the sun sets, avoid exposure to blue light from electronics and let darkness be your signal that it’s time to wind down.
Further, keep your bedroom temperature cool — between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit is often recommended — and reduce electromagnetic fields in your sleep environment.
Ideally, shut off the electricity to your bedroom at the circuit breaker before bed and turn off your Wi-Fi router for the night. These are just starting points to build a better sleep routine. For even more strategies to enhance your sleep, including finding a neutral sleep position and adjusting your bedtime to be earlier, read my comprehensive list of 33 healthy sleep habits.
These additional tips will further refine your sleep hygiene for even better nights and a healthier, well-rested you.
