Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast and part three in this ultimately

four-part series all about exercise and sleep. In the first two

episodes I told you about if and how exercise beneficially improve sleep and does so at different stages

across our lives. But what we've not yet explored is the following. How does the type of exercise, the

intensity of that exercise, and the duration of that exercise impact the benefits of sleep that you get.

And I think it's important that we cover these because, for example, my exercise regiment is probably different to yours, both in terms of how long I exercise, I suspect,

I suspect some of you ultra training folks exercise far longer than I do although I'm an

exercise freak and exercise every day but also how vigorously you exercise in terms of the intensity.

Also, my preferred forms of exercise, meaning the type of exercise,

which for me, why do I always bring this back to me, I don't know if it helps,

which for me is cycling and lifting weights, but that may not be your cup of tea. You may be doing something different.

How do these three different things, the duration, the intensity and the type of exercise

change the exercise sleep equation.

Let's begin with intensity.

In the last episode I described a nicely controlled study of middle-aged adults.

And in that study after a baseline night of sleep assessment, the individuals were split into an active group who exercised and a control group who didn't exercise.

And you'll remember that the exercise group showed some really nice sleep benefits relative to the no exercise group.

It turns out, however, there was an added subtlety within the exercise group because it contained three different subgroups.

There was a moderate intensity aerobic exercise group, there was a high intensity aerobic exercise group,

and then there was a moderate to intense weight training group resistance training which

depending on of course how you do it is going to be a mix of both an aerobic or

aerobic exercise.

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