When I swim in the morning, I feel like a nap shortly after.
When I swim at night, I am wired and can't fall asleep for hours.
Just swimming, too -- other exercise is just the opposite.
If I swim in the evening and it's aerobic stuff, I sleep well, but I have to be very careful with sprints; too many or too hard and I can have trouble sleeping or get a migraine later. Weights late in the day can also be problematic. My muscles get all jumpy and I have trouble getting to sleep. The best approach when doing weights seems to be to lift in the am and then do a casual swim later in the day as I get better sleep and have less soreness later. The problem is that this approach can be difficult to fit into my schedule.
Rant mode on: Meet directors should provide an opportunity to warm down after evening swim meets, for the above reasons. Rant off.
I'm so glad I'm not alone on this one. My team practices @ 8:30-9:30 on T/Th nights.
Last night I even took an advil PM and still didn't get to sleep til 1 AM.
-Michael P
Every article I have ever read on "proper sleep hygeine" (as the medical world likes to call it) has stated that exercise should be completed at least four hours before bedtime, in order to sleep well. This is another reason I won't drive the (almost) two hours round trip to swim with the closest Masters team!
Every article I have ever read on "proper sleep hygeine" (as the medical world likes to call it) has stated that exercise should be completed at least four hours before bedtime, in order to sleep well. This is another reason I won't drive the (almost) two hours round trip to swim with the closest Masters team!
This is probably the main factor, but I find myself wondering how much 'when and what you eat' before a workout affects this phenomenon.
The very few times I swim after work don't seem to have any effect on my sleep, but I do have issues with timing my last afternoon snack and getting through workout without stomach distress from having any food left in it.
Of course, early morning swims are done on a completely empty stomach, except for the energy drink I consume during workout.
When I swim in the morning, I feel like a nap shortly after.
When I swim at night, I am wired and can't fall asleep for hours.
Just swimming, too -- other exercise is just the opposite.
I'm so glad I'm not alone on this one. My team practices @ 8:30-9:30 on T/Th nights.
Last night I even took an advil PM and still didn't get to sleep til 1 AM.
-Michael P
When I swim in the morning, I feel like a nap shortly after.
When I swim at night, I am wired and can't fall asleep for hours.
Just swimming, too -- other exercise is just the opposite.
The exact same thing happens to me.
When you swim in the morning after being a little (even just a very tiny little) bit short on sleep time, then I would assume that after the workout, your body feels like sleeping again. May be hard to get good quality workouts under these circumstances.
At night, it's quite simple. If you swim hard (lots of master coaches like to throw in hard race pace sets at night), then you boost the rate of your base metabolism. During those hardish swims, some catecolamine hormons (epinephrin, norepenefrin sorry for the english mistakes) get released in greater than usual levles. These in turn have an impact on the rate of your metabolism.
When going to bed, you may experiment feeling hot and may experiment a higher than usual HR. You feel aware and don't feel in a state to get to sleep. It's normal. Training is a stress, and too much stress will make your sleep harder.
On the other hand, pay attention to those workouts are are exclusively aerobic, no challenging set. Just fine aerobic relaxing stuff. After these, endorphins is the hormone that is found in greater level. And that can definitely contribute to favor the sleep.
Whenever I swim I am energized after. I swim in mornings, now, but when I swam in the evenings, I had to try other things to help me sleep: melatonin (awesome), beer (also awesome, but the bladder hated it at 2 in the morning). Finally, the thing that worked the best for me was sitting in the sauna after the workout. That wore me out and I slept like a baby.
Now, if I can't sleep (I travel a often over 8 or 9 time zones), I sit in the sauna and take a melatonin=sleep like a baby!
When going to bed, you may experiment feeling hot and may experiment a higher than usual HR. You feel aware and don't feel in a state to get to sleep. It's normal.
Glad to hear it's normal... the last time I had a night swim - I cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom, my bed room, did 2 loads of laundry and took the trash out. All within an hour and a half.
