(ETX Daily Up) – According to an American study, strength training would promote better sleep compared to aerobic exercise. Regular resistance exercises can save you up to 17 minutes of sleep every night.
Victim of insomnia? And if you try bodybuilding. According to a study presented by the American Heart Associationmuscle-strengthening exercises can help you have peaceful nights.
To carry out their research, the specialists followed 406 adults who did not exercise for a year. The volunteers were “overweight, obese and stage 1 high hypertension, at high risk of cardiovascular disease”. The specialists randomly divided them into four groups. One did only cardio, the second only muscle-strengthening exercises and the third mixed cardio and muscle-strengthening in equal parts. The last group is a control group.
Throughout the duration of the experiment, each week, the volunteers did 3 sports sessions of one hour. Participants were also asked to describe their sleep in terms of its quality, duration, time it takes them to fall asleep, and sleep disturbances.
Results? “Sleep disturbances decreased significantly in all groups, including the control group,” the study said. In detail, among the 42% of participants who started the study by sleeping less than seven hours per night, those who did resistance exercises 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 new avenue for the role of resistance exercise in promoting cardiovascular health.” , conclude the researchers.