Exercise vs. Sleep
“Are you gonna get up and exercise or snooze me and go back to sleep?”
Alarms around the world are asking people this question. And one of my best friends, working his ass off in grad school, posed it to me — what’s the better choice?
We know it’s healthy to exercise and to get a good night’s sleep, but what about when they’re at odds with each other?
First, the answer that will relieve some stress: when it happens once, it probably doesn’t matter all that much. Doing one workout isn’t what makes you strong, and missing one workout certainly doesn’t make you weak.
And some actionable strategies for when the choice keeps coming up:
1) Split the time
Sometimes it can feel like we either have an hour to exercise or an hour to sleep. But what if we chop it up differently? You could sleep for another 20-40 minutes, and then still get some great morning movement in!
2) Make the same time more effective
Sleep: we tend to talk about the number of hours of sleep as our measuring stick, but what about the quality of those hours? Here are a few of my favorite tips from the National Institutes of Health for improving sleep without taking more time:
Get exposure to sunlight during the day
Have a good sleeping environment (dark, cool, free of screens…)
Avoid alcohol, large meals, and intense exercise before bed
Exercise: making exercise effective is of course one of the key aspects of coaching — ultimately, strategies will vary a lot depending on your individual experience and goals. But here are a few that could help:
Make your warmup FUN
Focus on fewer goals at a time
Make strength work MORE intense: you don’t have to go all the way to failure (can’t do one more rep) in a strength exercise, but try to get close
Make cardio work LESS intense: high intensity sweating is all the rage these days, but the less sexy hilly walk could use some more airtime
3) Consider the long run
The demands on your time will change. Maybe right now it feels hard to fit it all in, and that can be really challenging. But when you zoom out, can you anticipate a different set of circumstances — a work project ending, a hobby season starting or stopping because of snow, a kid growing up and leaving the house?
It’s okay — and inevitable! — to change the amounts of sleep or exercise you get for periods of time. Hopefully giving this some thought will help you prepare for the opportunity when you do have a bit more time (or the challenge of having less). And ultimately, I hope you’ll give yourself some grace as you go through these changes.
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