Using early morning erg sessions to get back to sleep

[JRBJR]

I work from my home office and usually schedule my daily 30-40 minute erg sessions for the late morning or early afternoon. I usually start to feel more alert and energetic almost immediately afterwards.

I begin work early, about 5am (as does my wife, who drives to the office), and we both usually turn in between 9pm and 10pm. Recently, however, I've been waking up about 2am and frequently been unable to get back to sleep, spending the time instead thinking about the coming day's meetings and work requirements.

One morning about a month ago, rather than continue to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling after awakening around 2am, I went back to the office/exercise room, climbed on the erg, and did a 20 minute session, then returned to bed. I fell asleep within about 10 minutes and slept soundly until the wife awakened me at 5am. Since then, whenever I awake around 2am, I simply do another short erg session, then return to bed and quickly fall sleep.

I've searched the web and located medical site articles about how aerobic exercise energizes you and sharpens you cognitively, as well as the common admonitions about late evening exercise possibly affecting your ability to get to sleep. And I've read posts from those who admit to feeling sleepy or tired after a daytime workout. But I'm curious how my daytime erg workouts always leave me feeling energized and alert while my shorter early morning sessions allow me get back to sleep.

Anyone else have this experience?

[Anth_F]

Bit bizarre that one!! (you would think it should make it even harder to get back to sleep or at least it should do)

The late morning or afternoon erg sessions for me have helped my sleeping in a couple of ways.

1. I can now drift off to sleep much quicker.
2. I can now sleep longer periods of uninterrupted sleep.

When i used to wake up during the night (restless) I would just grab some milk or half a banana and that helped me get back off to sleep... sometimes before bedtime i used aromatherapy oils too such as Patchouli, clary sage, lavender, and ylang ylang to wind down and get nicely settled for bed. These all have great benefits for helping you sleep better. Valerian root is good too... that also helped me in the past.

Maybe you are doing too much exercise and this is kind of a sign you need to cut back a little

But the mind & body are a crazy thing sometimes!! You can all of a sudden develop strange things like this for instance, from out of nowhere, and hard to put your finger on exactly what the cause is. Sometimes it can go away as fast as it came on, but sometimes it can go on and on and on, then play on the mind and become an unhelpful habit you don't really want to keep feeding.

[Pie Man]

Could it be that the time on the erg allows you to forget the meetings etc you are thinking about and let you remember you are tired. You are keeping the sessions short longer ones may have the opposite affect. The brain is a funny thing that is certain.

[Gammmmo]

Could it be that the time on the erg allows you to forget the meetings etc you are thinking about and let you remember you are tired.

This is pretty much it. The OP has already said he's waking up due to stress (classic thing to wake up in the early hours and worry). The erg is simply taking your mind off your worries. This is a stronger effect than say raising body temperature (which is bad for sleep), and this combined with the fact your body is telling you you *should* be asleep at 2-3am, means you drift off again. In actual fact circadium rhythm means we are primed to sleep in the early afternoon too but few people can or are in a situation where they can indulge this. I can with my current part time jobs and find it essential.

[hjs]

My question is, why can,t you sleep. Maybe you should look at that. Your current "solution" can,t be a right one.

Reasons?

[Anth_F]

It's a bad solution!!! And will be made even worse if he continues down this path... it will likely have serious knock on effects.

Try those things i have mentioned (They should help you sleep better) Rather than jumping on an erg at daft 0 clock in the morning.

[ElinViking]

I have a lot of sleeping trouble too, but a couple things that have helped me:

1) keep a notebook and pen by your bed. If you think of something you need to do, write a brief note about it. Now, it's off your mind.
2) Meditation - sit quietly and just recognize thoughts and sensations coming and going - pay no attention to them, they're just "passing through".

Meditation is best when you do it daily - even if you cannot sit for more than 5 minutes at a time at the start, that's now 5 minutes of peace you didn't have before. The idea is that you are training your mind how to relax and let go. It's good to do it as you're going to sleep, too.

[JRBJR]

Thanks for the useful feedback. I'm not going to use the erg to get back to sleep again. I might end up erging all through the night. Just curious why a short and easy session at 2am would have this effect. I agree it's probably because a short erg session takes my mind off of my work. I'll talk to my GP and learn some good meditation techniques (mindfulness, etc.).

[G-dub]

Thanks for the useful feedback. I'm not going to use the erg to get back to sleep again. I might end up erging all through the night. Just curious why a short and easy session at 2am would have this effect. I agree it's probably because a short erg session takes my mind off of my work. I'll talk to my GP and learn some good meditation techniques (mindfulness, etc.).

I usually wake at 3:00 (the bewitching hour) Many times can get back to sleep. Sometimes I need to get up, drink a bit of tart cherry juice and have a spoon full of yogurt (not sure why I started this!) and then read a page or two. I think it's all about resetting the mind. It tends to run on spin cycle at times especially if you are a worrier like I am. I think meditation would help and keep meaning to start....

[Gammmmo]

Slightly OT but I've noticed that it's usually pointless lying awake worrying about sh*te anyway because although it can help you to see new angles on things (if you're wide awake and thinking through one thing in great detail), more often than not, I think it's more likely you'll think negatively and therefore it's not an accurate reflection of what you might truly think anyway. Realisation of this over the years has worked well for me.

[left coaster]

It's a common sleep hygiene strategy to not lay awake in bed for more than 20 minutes if a person can't get back to sleep. It's generally recommended that one gets up and does something else.

Personally, I find that when I'm lying in bed with no sense of time that hours can go by with me starting into to the dark, my mind whirling. The worst part is when I'm 1/2 way asleep and my mind becomes disinhibited and the usual cognitive strategies of disengaging from troubling thoughts start to fail - it's too easy to come up with apocalyptic interpretations of otherwise benign stressors or events.

I also don't see any problem with doing a couple k on the erg in the middle of the night. It''s probably better for a person than turning on a laptop and blasting our eyes full of blue light which makes getting back to sleep even more difficult. Doing intervals or hard efforts at 3AM would probably result in an increased state of arousal, but a couple easy k's sounds like a healthy and reasonable strategy to me.

research shows that moderate endurance exercise modulates arousal i.e. brings us down when too stressed, increases arousal when too down. If the OP's issue is heightened, stress related, arousal in the middle of the night some moderate endurance exercise could be just the thing he needs...

[Anth_F]

Well would you adam and eve it... i had one of these spells last night!!! Started raining really heavy and the amount of rain pouring from the gutter onto my bedroom window ledge woke me at like 4am and i just couldn't get back to sleep because of the continuous noise (ANNOYED) So i just got up and made myself a hot dog, and the rain eased and i was able to go back to bed and get some sleep!! But i slept til real late to catch up, which i don't like doing because it can break a nice body clock sleep pattern doing that.