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Resistance training promotes longer, more restful sleep, research suggests. — IStock.com pic via AFP
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NEW YORK, March 9 — According to an American study, strength training exercise could be better at promoting sleep than aerobic exercise. Regularly doing resistance training can help you gain up to 17 minutes of sleep every night.
If you’re having trouble sleeping, why not try resistance training exercise? According to a study presented by the American Heart Association, strengthening exercises could help you get a better night’s sleep.
To conduct their research, the specialists followed 406 adults who were not physically active for one year. The volunteers were classified as individuals with “overweight/obesity and elevated/stage 1 hypertension at high risk of cardiovascular disease.” The specialists randomly divided them into four groups. One group did only aerobic exercise, the second group did only muscle-strengthening exercise, and the third group did a 50/50 mix of cardio and resistance training. The last group was a control group.
For the duration of the experiment, each week, the volunteers did three one-hour exercise sessions. Participants were also asked to describe their sleep in terms of quality, duration, the time it takes to fall asleep, and sleep disturbances.
The result? “Sleep disturbances decreased significantly in all groups, including the control group,” the study notes. In detail, among the 42 per cent of participants who started the study sleeping less than seven hours per night, those who did resistance exercise slept 17 minutes more per night.
“These results indicate that resistance exercise may have superior benefits on sleep compared to aerobic exercise, which could provide a novel pathway for the role of resistance exercise in promoting cardiovascular health,” the researchers conclude. — ETX Studio