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How exercise resets your body clock and improves sleep patterns

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9 months ago

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How exercise resets your body clock and improves sleep patterns

Exercise improves sleep quality and helps treat sleep disorders by regulating circadian rhythms, reducing stress, and enhancing physiological functions like melatonin production and autonomic balance.

Review: The impact of exercise on sleep and sleep disorders. Image Credit: Lysenko Andrii / Shutterstock

In a recent review article published in the journal npj Biological Timing and Sleep, researchers summarized the research on how exercise, or structured physical activity, improves sleep quality, both for those with sleep disorders and healthy individuals. They highlighted that the effects of exercise on sleep are influenced by factors such as an individual’s age, sex, fitness level, and the type, timing, and intensity of exercise.

Types of Exercise

Exercise is any form of repetitive, planned, and structured physical activity. Aerobic exercise involves activities that use the body’s large muscle groups, increasing the heart rate and the amount of oxygen a person uses. Swimming, cycling, and walking are forms of aerobic exercise.

While aerobic exercise improves cardiovascular health, anaerobic exercise, which includes sprinting and weight training, builds muscle strength and mass. Meanwhile, stretching exercises focus on improving an individual’s range of motion, but the evidence is mixed regarding whether or not they can prevent injuries.

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Dynamic exercise involves moving joints and appears to have health benefits in the long term, including improved blood flow and lower blood pressure. However, static exercise occurs when muscles are activated without movement and can increase blood pressure significantly but build strength over time. The journal article also noted that these different forms of exercise may have distinct effects on sleep, with aerobic exercise generally providing the most benefits for sleep quality.

Advantages of Exercise

Exercise is critical to regulating weight, as it prevents excessive gain and can support weight loss by burning calories and balancing calorie expenditure and intake. It decreases the risk of diabetes, hypertension, and depression. Regular exercise also improves cardiovascular health, improves heart recovery, and decreases the resting heart rate.

Beyond physical benefits, exercise also improves mood and energy. It increases energy levels by improving the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to the tissues. Meanwhile, exercise improves mood, reduces stress, and enhances relaxation, particularly if it takes the form of activities that a person enjoys. Research has shown that exercise can reduce levels of cortisol, a stress hormone linked to sleep disturbances, while increasing melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep cycles.

Not getting adequate amounts of exercise has been linked to chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease, which have become leading causes of global mortality.

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How Exercise Improves Sleep

In healthy individuals, exercise improves sleep efficiency, which is defined as the ratio of time a person spends sleeping to the total time they spend in bed.

Specifically, exercise between four and eight hours before going to bed can reduce wakefulness during sleep and help people fall asleep faster. However, the review emphasized that exercising less than four hours before bedtime may delay melatonin release and increase body temperature, potentially making it harder to fall asleep. Regular exercise also improves overall sleep quality and helps people sleep longer.

Over time, exercise improves sleep hygiene, namely the habits that help people sleep well. This leads to stable sleep-wake cycles and improves the regulation of the body’s circadian rhythms. Because exercise acts as a “zeitgeber” (a factor that influences the body’s biological clock), it can help reset disrupted circadian rhythms, particularly in individuals who experience sleep disturbances due to shift work or jet lag.

Exercise can also indirectly improve sleep by reducing stress and enhancing mood. Regular and consistent exercise reduces stress, depression, and anxiety. By reducing the heart rate, exercise calms the body, facilitating sleep. It also regulates hormones like cortisol and melatonin, which are linked to sleep patterns.

Treating Sleep-Related Disorders

Researchers have studied the benefits of exercise for alleviating sleep disorders. Exercise has psychological benefits, reducing the emotional stress and anxiety associated with disordered sleep. It can also reduce sleep-disordered breathing and improve autonomic and hormonal imbalances that worsen sleep quality.

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Regarding specific sleep disorders, people experiencing insomnia can benefit from moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, which improves the onset of sleep, reduces the time spent awake, and enhances the overall sleep quality. The review also noted that exercise may be more effective when combined with sleep hygiene interventions, such as maintaining a consistent bedtime and avoiding stimulants before sleep.

Another condition that can hamper sleep quality is restless leg syndrome (RLS), a neurological condition that causes an uncontrollable urge to move the legs. Aerobic exercise can also reduce symptoms of RLS, including throbbing, aching, and itching in the legs. The study highlighted that the benefits of exercise for RLS may be due to improved blood circulation and neuromuscular function.

For people with sleep apnea, which causes breathing to stop and start repeatedly during sleep, researchers recommend combining weight loss with exercise to reduce the severity of the condition and improve functioning and wakefulness during the day. Importantly, the review found that even in the absence of significant weight loss, regular exercise can improve sleep apnea symptoms by enhancing autonomic nervous system regulation and reducing inflammation.

Conclusions

While existing studies on the relationship between exercise and sleep are promising, researchers identified ways to apply these findings and avenues for future investigations.

Long-term studies are needed to understand how different durations, intensities, and types of exercise impact sleep patterns. Diverse populations should be included to identify tailored and effective interventions for different demographic groups. The review also called for more research into the molecular mechanisms underlying the effects of exercise on sleep, such as its impact on brain function and immune responses.

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There is still much that is not known about the physiological mechanisms that underpin exercise’s impacts on sleep quality and circadian rhythms, particularly among those with chronic sleep disorders. The systemic and molecular effects of exercise on sleep also need more exploration.

Current research can be applied to interventions to improve the health of athletes and the general public. For athletes, optimizing sleep is crucial for recovery and performance, and the review suggested integrating personalized sleep-monitoring protocols into training programs.

Physical activity should be promoted as a non-pharmacological intervention for the general public, but clear guidelines regarding intensity, frequency, and timing should be provided for different age groups. The researchers stressed the importance of personalized exercise prescriptions that account for an individual’s age, fitness level, and existing sleep disturbances to maximize benefits.

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Does life have to be a never-ending workout?

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8 hours ago

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November 14, 2025

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Does life have to be a never-ending workout?

The claims: The midlife woman’s new accessory, weighted vests are promoted as a muscle-building, bone-boosting, fat-loss life hack. Wear it around the house, while exercising or walking, they say, to get stronger and fitter and to improve your bone health.

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Back or Knee Pain? Uh-Oh, You May Have ‘Dead Butt Syndrome’

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1 day ago

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November 14, 2025

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Back or Knee Pain? Uh-Oh, You May Have ‘Dead Butt Syndrome’

Nov. 13, 2025 – You won’t find any support groups for dead butt syndrome, aka gluteal amnesia, sleepy glutes, flabby butt, longback, or, for King of the Hill fans, diminished gluteal syndrome.

“They all mean sort of the same thing: weak gluteal muscles,” said Dean Somerset, a clinical exercise physiologist based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and co-author of Rock Solid Resilience.

If you guessed that small, weak, and poorly functioning glutes are often the result of too much sitting and too little exercise, you wouldn’t be wrong, according to Somerset.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, has seen it in healthy, fit, active clients, including a few professional athletes. “When we do exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges, it’s very easy for other muscles to do the work you want the glutes to do,” Waterbury said

In both populations, the glutes stop doing what they should, and that can lead to serious problems up and down the movement chain. 

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If misfiring glutes force the lower-back muscles to take on loads they’re not meant to handle, the result can be years of back pain. And if the glutes fail to perform their stabilizing role in exercise and sports, you could be looking at chronically sore knees, or perhaps even an ACL injury. 

That means the Venn diagram of dead butt sufferers includes people who sit a lot, active people, those with back pain, and those with knee pain. All those people, all that overlap, all those butts.

Is your butt among them?

Putting a Name to the Pain

Stuart McGill, PhD, coined the term “gluteal amnesia” to describe what happens when pain causes people to change how they move.

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“In people with longer-term pain, the pattern of nerve pulses distributed to the muscles can become corrupted,” he explained. “The pain kicks off an inhibition pathway, so the brain finds a different way to do the same basic thing.” 

That, in turn, changes the way muscles like the hamstrings contribute to the movement.

“But even when the pain has gone away, the brain often remembers the painful pattern,” McGill said. Which means it also forgets how to use the muscles appropriately and efficiently. 

McGill, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and author of Back Mechanic, showed how the process works in a 2013 study. In that paper, he and his co-authors used “gluteal amnesia” and “gluteal inhibition” interchangeably. 

The latter term is probably more appropriate, given that some people hear the former and think it implies gluteal dementia, as if the misplaced movement patterns can never be restored.

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Fortunately for the gluteally deficient among us, they can. Just not in the way most of us would assume. 

Hips, Femur, Knees, and Woes

While McGill was teasing out the connection between gluteal amnesia and back pain, Christopher Powers, PT, PhD, was looking at how abnormal glute activation patterns could lead to knee problems. 

“The gluteal muscles control the femur,” he explained. “The femur’s half the knee joint. So by definition, the gluteal muscles control half the knee.”

Powers is associate chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California, where he studies the root causes of the lower-body injuries. And he addresses a lot of them with the athletes and patients he sees at the Movement Performance Institute in Los Angeles, which he founded and owns. 

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His research has shown that a key function of the gluteal muscles is to prevent the femur from rolling inward during sports, exercise, or everyday physical activities. 

“Once you stop using the muscle, the brain kind of forgets about it,” Powers said. “You lose the neural connectivity.”

And if the brain forgets how to stabilize the femur, just about anything you do, from walking to landing after a jump, will put stress on your knee joints. 

How to Know if Your Butt is Dead or Dying

Remember, given that sedentary and active people have this issue, aside from chronic knee or back pain, you may not be able to tell if your glutes are firing properly or improperly. 

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Waterbury recommends this self-test: the single-leg glute bridge. 

Lie on your back with one leg lifted out straight and the other leg bent at a 45-degree angle with the foot flat on the floor. Your thighs should be parallel. Raise your butt so your thighs and torso form a straight line. 

Hold that position for 20 seconds (or as long as you can up to 20), while paying close attention to which muscles you feel are working the hardest. Lower your hips and repeat with the other leg. 

If you felt the strongest contraction in your hamstrings or lower back, instead of your glutes, you need to improve your gluteal activation. Also, muscle imbalances are common, so it’s also not unusual for you to feel weaker in one glute or the other.

Two of Powers’s studies offer encouraging news for those whose glutes have lost their way. 

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The first, published in 2016, found that a week of glute-activation exercises increased neural drive to the muscles. 

A follow-up, published in 2022, found that the same exercise protocol made the muscles more able to stabilize the femur.   

So let’s take a look at the program.

Wake Up, Dead Butt

Powers’s program includes just three exercises, all of which may look familiar: clamshell, side-lying hip abduction, and fire hydrant. 

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Even if you haven’t used the exercises in your own routines, you’ve probably seen other people doing variations of them. 

Here’s the catch: To do the program correctly, you have to forget what you’ve done or seen. 

Instead of doing sets and reps, you’ll hold each position for up to a minute at a time. And you’ll need to do the program almost every day. 

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“When you do reps – up and down, up and down – the focus tends to be on the movement,” Powers said. Isometric holds like these require something else: intense concentration on squeezing the muscle in one continuous position.

That extended muscle activation allows the brain to reopen its channels of communication. If you follow the isometric holds with exercises that use the glutes, like squats or step-ups, you reinforce those neural signals.

To get the most out of the exercises, you’ll want to use a miniband positioned around your thighs, just above your knees. When you can hold a position for a full minute, use a more challenging band the next time. 

Here’s a closer look at each exercise. 

Clamshell

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Lie on your side with your legs together and your hips and knees bent 45 degrees. 

Lift your top knee straight up while keeping your feet in contact with each other. 

Feel the squeeze in your glutes and hold for up to a minute. Switch sides and repeat. 

Side-Lying Hip Abduction

 Lie on your side with your top leg straight and bottom leg bent at the knee about 45 degrees.

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Lift your top leg up and slightly back.

Feel the squeeze in your glutes and hold for up to a minute. Switch sides and repeat.

Fire Hydrant

To Powers, the fire hydrant is the best of the activation exercises. “If I were to pick one, I’d take it over the other two,” he said.

But it’s also the trickiest one to get right, since you’re asking your glutes to perform three functions, as you’ll see: 

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Kneel on all fours with your hips parallel to the floor and your hands shoulder-width apart.

Without shifting your hips, lift one leg up (hip abduction) and back (hip extension). Position your thigh so it’s neither perpendicular to your torso (straight out to the side) nor aligned with it (straight back), but instead about halfway between those two points. (It’s called “fire hydrant” because you’re mimicking a dog doing what a dog does to a fire hydrant.)

Now turn your thigh outward (external rotation) until you feel tension in the band. 

The goal isn’t to achieve any particular range of motion. It’s to reach a position you can hold while keeping your hips level with the floor.

Hold for up to a minute, switch sides, and repeat. 

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Restoring Your Seat of Power

People in Powers’s studies did three isometric holds of each exercise, with each leg, twice a day for seven consecutive days. 

But Waterbury, who studied under Powers at USC, uses a streamlined version of the program with clients, athletes, and patients. 

Start with these exercises:

  • Clamshell, 30 seconds per side
  • Side-lying hip abduction, 30 seconds per side
  • Fire hydrant, 30 seconds per side 

Do the exercises six days a week for four weeks, either on their own or as part of a warmup before a workout. “That’s plenty to get the glutes activated,” Waterbury said.

After four weeks, do the exercises three times a week, preferably before a strength workout that includes squats, deadlifts, lunges, or other movements that use your glutes in coordinated action with other lower-body muscles. 

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You can also do more advanced versions of the exercises, as Waterbury demonstrated in this video.

What matters most, he emphasized, is that you make these isometric holds a permanent part of your fitness routine.

“Too many things we do throughout the day make your glutes want to shut down again,” he said. 

Ultimately – and this is pretty good life wisdom – it’s a lot easier to keep your butt alive and well than it is to bring it back from the dead.

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Multi-Home Gym Equipment Exercise Package Available for Sale from Strongway Gym Supplies

Published

2 days ago

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November 13, 2025

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Multi-Home Gym Equipment Exercise Package Available for Sale from Strongway Gym Supplies

Coventry, UK – November 10, 2025 – PRESSADVANTAGE –

Strongway Gym Supplies has announced the availability of its new multi-home gym exercise packages, developed to provide users across the United Kingdom with complete training solutions for home fitness. The company stated that the new range brings together a selection of strength and conditioning equipment designed to accommodate both compact living spaces and larger dedicated setups. This update aligns with the growing demand for integrated systems that offer a balance between versatility, durability, and convenience.

According to Strongway, the newly available packages have been designed following feedback from customers who sought to combine the functionality of a full gym with the practicality of home use. Each setup is assembled from the company’s existing strength and cardio equipment, providing customers with a cohesive set of tools for developing endurance, flexibility, and muscle conditioning. Further information about Strongway’s home fitness range is available at: https://strongway.co.uk/collections/home-fitness.

Strongway confirmed that the packages include adjustable benches, multi-gyms, free weights, and supporting accessories that can be adapted to suit different exercise routines. The company said its approach has been to ensure that every product within a package integrates effectively with the others, helping users create efficient and space-conscious workout environments. The introduction of these bundles, the firm added, represents a shift towards more comprehensive and accessible fitness solutions for those seeking long-term training systems that do not compromise on quality.

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Co-Director Mandip Walia commented that this announcement reflects Strongway’s commitment to expanding its offering for home users while maintaining the build standards of commercial equipment. “We’ve focused on bringing together our most popular products into packages that make sense for different training styles,” he said. “The goal has been to offer flexibility without sacrificing reliability or design integrity. People want their home gyms to perform like professional setups, and that’s the standard we continue to aim for.”

The company added that these multi-gym packages were developed with modularity in mind, allowing users to build and expand their systems over time. This approach, Strongway explained, ensures that customers can adjust their training setups as their routines evolve, reducing the need for complete replacements or costly upgrades.

By offering equipment combinations that support strength, mobility, and conditioning exercises, Strongway intends to make high-quality fitness tools more accessible to a broader audience.

The announcement also coincides with the company’s ongoing production review, which focuses on maintaining precision engineering across its equipment range. Strongway has also confirmed that it is in a continuous process of expanding its product range to support growing nationwide demand for its home gym products. More details about its bundled package deals can be found at: https://strongway.co.uk/collections/ultimate-package-deals.

Co-Director Randeep Walia added that customer input has played a significant role in shaping Strongway’s recent developments. “We’ve seen a real shift in how people approach fitness at home,” he said. “Many customers now want something that can last for years, with the option to add new equipment as they progress. These packages are designed with that in mind — adaptable, practical, and consistent in quality.”

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The broader home fitness market in the UK continues to expand, driven by increased interest in personal wellness and convenience-based exercise options. Strongway’s latest product release reflects this trend, providing an adaptable framework for users who wish to establish their own home training environments. The company noted that it remains focused on balancing durability with usability, ensuring that equipment remains suitable for a variety of fitness levels.

Strongway’s latest announcement follows a series of updates to its home and commercial product lines, as the company continues to strengthen its reputation for manufacturing reliable gym systems with consistent build quality.

Strongway Gym Supplies confirmed that the new home gym packages are now available for order through its official website, with delivery options available across the United Kingdom. The company emphasised that customers can expect the same quality assurance applied across all product categories, from individual weights and bars to complete multi-station setups. Those seeking additional details about the company and its current range of fitness solutions can find more information at: https://strongway.co.uk/.

The company concluded that the release marks another step in its broader mission to make dependable, high-quality exercise systems more accessible to users at every stage of their fitness journey. By combining professional engineering standards with thoughtful design, Strongway aims to support the continued growth of home-based training environments across the country.

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Readers interested in ordering home fitness products or package deals online can do so by visiting the collection links provided above.

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For more information about Strongway Gym Supplies, contact the company here:

Strongway Gym Supplies
Mandip Walia
+44-800-001-6093
sales@strongway.co.uk
Strongway Gym Supplies, 26 The Pavilion, Coventry CV3 1QP, United Kingdom

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