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Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Personal anecdote: Plenty of exercise improves the quality of my sleep, therefore requiring not as much sleep.

I do find it does improve the quality of sleep, but I also find that I sleep more if I exercise. When I am exercising vigourusly six days a week, I am passing out at like 9 pm. I recently had some small surgery and couldn't exercise for a few weeks, and I found myself staying up super later and having trouble going to sleep. I just wasn't that tired.

I do a lot of weight lifting and indoor cycling, and they have helped me get high-quality sleep and have much more consistent days.

I think it would be hard to get both get a lot of exercise and not sleep much. Exercise improves sleep, and when you are sleep deprived, it is hard to get energy to exercise.

Another personal anecdote - if I do deadlifts on any given day, I need an hour extra sleep that night (or more accurately, I suffer in the morning from not having had it). Maybe that need fades with experience but its a major reason deadlifts don't feature prominently in my routine

I think this is why a lot of routines tapper down how much deadlifting you do as you get stronger, sometimes to once a week or once a month.

Professional football players don't deadlift, for instance. They do a lot power cleans and variations. Deadlifting can be very taxing (although it is one of my favorite exercises).

Personal anecdote: I have trouble getting enough exercise because of fatigue. And it doesn't do much for helping me sleep.

Might just be you're doing too much exercise. If I over-reach too far, I end up not being able to sleep all night.

Personal anecdote: It seems that some people produce metabolites that disrupt their sleep when they exercise, even at low levels of exercise.

There is the concept of "hypermetabolic" where it is hard to sleep after sustained exercise essentially because your body is so fired up. I have experienced this, but it really has to be an unusually long run, at least 30km usually more. It would not surprise me that you're correct, and the threshold for this state varies by person (and almost certainly fitness level) so for some it could occur at low levels like you say.

I get something like this even from a relatively light exercise (~40 minutes of pilates reformer). If I do it after 6pm my body feels very hot and I have trouble sleeping even 5-6 hours later.

Morning HIIT in microdoses, working up to more.

Evening exercise won't do anything and will probably make it worse, e.g., body thinks it needs to stay awake to party / dance / get some lovin. Evolutionary psych basis possibly?

I view exercise, sleep and quality fuel (healthy food) are all part of a cycle for health and performance optimization.

Military, school, work, life in general. Keep those three going, and you are operating at peak performance.

Came here to say this.

PE recalibrate a lot of things in me, I sleep earlier, fall asleep faster, goes deeper.

Another anecdote, I definitely notice a lack of sleep on my rest days. It's annoying.

The 'Plenty' is very key here. I have friends who excercise a lot and are able to get by with less sleep but if you stop working out the need for sleep comes back real fast.

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