Sleep is essential to our well-being – and unfortunately, Indian professionals are getting less and less of it. A recent sleep survey conducted by LocalCircles had lots of concerning stats about this:
- 59% of Indians get less than 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep daily.
- We’re further damaging our sleep cycles to try and cope. 36% say they sleep on Sunday afternoons, while others depend on coping mechanisms like power napping and waking up late on weekends.
- Even in the times we do get to sleep, it’s getting disturbed. 72% say they constantly wake up mid-sleep to use the bathroom, with other prominent disturbances being phone notifications, external sounds, mosquitoes and interruptions by loved ones.
The last point is especially important. In an era where work hours and pressures don’t seem to be going down, we have less control over how much time we’re able to sleep. And without the right amount of sleep, we potentially subject ourselves to a variety of mental and physiological disorders too depressing to mention here.
What we do have control over is making the most of the time we do get to sleep. Your sleep quality is critical for this, and it is governed by 3 main phases:
| The Phases Of Your Sleep Cycle | ||
| Phase 1: Getting To Sleep |
Phase 2: Staying Asleep |
Phase 3: Translating Benefits Into Waking Life |
| A key part of improving sleep quality is to reduce the time between you getting to bed and you officially falling asleep. | Once you fall asleep, it is imperative for your sleep to reach a deep stage where you’re not being constantly woken up by avoidable circumstances. | Finally, sleep quality is optimized when all its mental and physiological benefits carry over to your waking life. |
There are various ways to improve different aspects of your sleep quality – reducing your caffeine intake, limiting alcohol consumption, investing in a good pillow and mattress. Some are even resorting to unhealthy measures like regularly using over-the-counter melatonin. One of the most effective (yet lesser known) methods out there of improving sleep quality is regular strength training, because it has transformative benefits across all 3 aforementioned phases.
Let’s now look in-depth at how strength training with resistance improves each individual phase:
Phase 1 – Getting To Sleep
The Science Behind It:
All of us have faced this feeling while trying to fall asleep:
We try our best, but we just can’t seem to go to sleep. We fixate on it, which makes the problem even worse. Before we know it, hours have passed and we have to get up to go about our day soon. The parameter at play here is called sleep onset latency. Long sleep onset times are a reflection of nervous system hyperarousal, a condition where our body is tired but our brain is not ready to shut down yet.
How Strength Training Helps:
In a 12-week study conducted by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, those undertaking regular resistance training saw sleep onset times cut down by half compared to the control groups (16 minutes vs. 30 minutes).
This is because resistance training creates high neuromuscular and metabolic demands, accelerating adenosine accumulation in your brain. Adenosine increases sleep pressure, facilitating a faster transition from wakefulness to sleep.
A smart home gym centered around resistance training – like the Portl UltraGym – can help you with regular workouts that help drastically improve your sleep onset times. The UltraGym comes with 150+ different strength training exercises, all done in a footprint of just 2.4 square feet.
Phase 2 – Staying Asleep
The Science Behind This:
Once we finally snooze off, we cycle through 3 distinct types of sleep:
| Light Sleep (N1 & N2) | Deep Sleep Or Slow-Wave Sleep (N3) | Rapid Eye Movement (REM) Sleep |
| An intermediary stage that serves as a gateway to deeper, more restorative stages. | The most physically restorative phase of sleep. | The stage of sleep most associated with dreaming and mental recovery. |
Our sleep quality improves the more time we spend in the latter 2 stages of sleep (N3 and REM). Interruptions like going to the bathroom occur not because of hydration, but regulatory issues stemming from spending too much time in the N1 & N2 stages. These interruptions all add up to a key figure called wake after sleep onset (WASO) – the total amount of time you spend awake after you have initially fallen asleep. Metrics like low WASO times and higher percentage of N3 sleep all contribute to your overall sleep efficiency.
How Strength Training Helps:
The same 12-week study saw resistance training increasing the slow-wave sleep (N3) percentage of participants. Another study by the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry saw WASO times decrease by close to 10 minutes on chronic insomnia patients undertaking resistance training.
Moreover, varying and augmenting the resistance in your workout programs has been shown to drastically improve sleep efficiency. Programs involving elastic resistance (longer pull outs = greater resistance) and hybrid training with cardio have been scientifically proven to accelerate this process – the study with hybrid training, for example, saw WASO decrease by a dramatic 54 minutes.
The Portl UltraGym comes with 5 different modes (including elastic and hybrid rowing) for you to create a more holistic strength training program. You can form a customized plan based on the benefits you’re looking for – some modes promote higher sleep efficiency, while others can help with factors like reduced stress, increased balance and more concentration. Click here to speak to a Portl expert about the specific goals you’re looking to achieve.
| Portl UltraGym’s 5 Training Modes | ||||
Standard |
Eccentric |
Isokinetic |
Elastic |
Rowing |
Phase 3 – Translating Benefits Into Waking Life
The Science Behind This:
Good sleep quality isn’t just about relaxation, but the optimal secretion of various hormones that serve us well in our waking life:
| Hormones | What They Help With While We’re Awake |
| Cortisol | Lower daytime stress reactivity, better focus under pressure, less fatigue or irritability |
| Growth Hormone (GH) | Tissue repair and muscle recovery that fuels better physical readiness |
| Testosterone | More levels of energy, including to push hard for strength training |
| Leptin / Ghrelin | Fewer cravings, improved dietary control and more stable energy throughout the day |
How Strength Training Helps:
The proven benefits of strength training in previously discussed parameters like sleep onset and WASO ensure that our sleep cycles are aligned for optimal secretion of these hormones. Moreover, we directly improve these levels through the act of resistance training itself, creating a positive multiplier effect of sorts:
- GH responses are shown to be optimal with different muscle action responses, with eccentric training (one of the modes in the UltraGym) being one of the more effective ways of generating response.
- Heavy resistance training is also linked with positively altering the endocrine stress response, including testosterone and cortisol dynamics.
Portl UltraGym – The Ideal Strength Training-Centric Home Gym Setup
In an era where we’re already struggling to find time to sleep, the time investment required to go and work out at a gym might not be possible to integrate into our busy schedules. All the aforementioned benefits only take place if you’re regular with your workouts – therefore, a better option might be building a daily workout routine at home.
The Portl UltraGym brings to your home everything you expect (and more!) from gym-based strength training programs:
- It’s versatile, replacing several gym equipment with a single device that accommodates 150+ exercises across 5 strength training modes.
- It’s progressive, with digital resistance upto 70kg that scales up seamlessly across years of strength training – without the need for any additional equipment.
- It’s safe, with automatic one-click disengagement that activates the second you feel discomfort.
- It’s personalized to you, with curated programs from the best trainers in the world on our free home workout app.
- It’s results-backed, with real-time performance analytics ensuring that you optimize every workout.
All this, at a one-time fee lower than the cost of an annual premium gym membership.
Click here to take a demo of the UltraGym, a home gym machine that leads to better gains… and better sleep!
0 Comments