Training at Night and Sleep

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi BBM Team,

due to my work schedule, I can only train at night on week days - usually starting my training around 8:30pm and finishing around 10:00 to 10:30pm
Then I take my shower, post-workout etc. and try to be in bed by 11:30 to 0:00.

However, I find it dfficult to fall and stay asleep, especially after heavy deadlift sessions. Heartbeat is still elevated, adrenaline in the blood, etc… so I don’t really feel rested when I get up around 7:00am the next morning.

Do you have any recommendation on how to better calm down after training and night and improve sleep quality afterwards?

Thank you and best regards

Toby

2

This is unfortunately common in some individuals who train at night with close proximity to bed. A few things may help:

  1. Some folks get used to it over time and don’t find any issues after adapting to it.
  2. Ensure a caffeine cut off of at noon-2pm ish.
  3. Reduce the RPE of lifts in the session until you get used to it.

All this being said, your HR is likely to be elevated above baseline for a substantial period of time as part of the recovery process. The adrenaline tends to be very short-lived and I wouldn’t be trying to pin point a single cause. Rather, we’re working on a sleep-lifestyle mismatch here that’s multifactorial. For example, it may be that you don’t have enough time to sleep right now due to your schedule vs. some inherent exercise issue. In general, most people who exercise close to bed tend to have increased sleep latency, but transition to deep sleep faster to mitigate the reduced sleep at some point.

-Jordan

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