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MyFitnessPal Community

Fitness on little sleep

DebTavares

Most days of the week I have trouble falling asleep at a reasonable hour. On these days I'm skipping my workouts because of it. Ideally, I would like to workout 5-6 days per week, but only end up going 2-3 days.

My question is, is it ok to workout on little sleep anyway? If I push through, will I feel better?

I don't just want to lose weight; I also want to improve my fitness but I feel like my sleep schedule is hampering things. Even when I work afternoons I can't seem to get up at 9 am to go workout because of falling asleep so late. Help!

Replies

nseelam

Sleep is soooo important! I'm not sure if you can have 'good fitness' without sleep, but I can say having good health without much sleep is unlikely.

Due to work troubles, I ended up sleeping 4-5 hours a night for almost a year and it RUINED me physically. If you have sleep issues, you should definitely try to break out of that schedule.

What I typically do is work out in the morning by getting up early. By the time the evening rolls around, I'm exhausted enough to go to sleep. If otherwise, it might be worth breaking it up into 2 workouts of shorter intervals, but it's hard to actually get good results if you had been previously working out (at least, for me when I did this).

From my own experience, working out without enough sleep is insufficient to build good health. Everyone is different though!

meshashesha2012

lack of sleep is not a valid excuse for me. on those rare occasions i have a late iced latte which peps me up for the workout. then i get the work done and make sure to get a good night's sleep

if it's a one off, occassional thing then suck it up and do the work. if it's a continual issue then fix the sleep issues

steve0820

Rest and sleep are 2 different things.

Both are important, but both serve different purposes.

I average 4-5 hours of sleep a day, I also, work straight nights. Am i tired when I workout? Yes, most of the time, but I push through. A tired workout, is always better then no workout at all.

Of course, i'd like to get more sleep, but some days it's not possible.

melaniecheeks

Maybe you would sleep better if you DID workout?

Velum_cado

Maybe you would sleep better if you DID workout?

That's a good point. I find I sleep best on days that I've worked out.

ninerbuff

Lack of rest DIRECTLY affects your efficiency of your workout AND RECOVERY. You just have to decide to go to sleep earlier or keep up the routine you have now.

A.C.E. Certified Personal Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

zen82

Ninerbuff I have fallen into the exact same pattern and finding it really hard to break out of it! I am terrible at going to bed on time and always seem to drift back to a night owl pattern with only the tiniest, tiniest excuse or blip! It's enormously affected my ability to workout and i just had one of those crash and burn weekends where I napped about 2-3 times on Saturday and Sunday and could not make myself get out the door for the run I had been looking forward to. I'm trying to find smaller workouts for tired days in the hope that once I get started it might at least turn out that I end up doing more, and might help me sleep...