“Sleep is the prayer the body prays,” wrote Wendell Berry.
Beautiful sentiment, right? Yet for many of us, our bodies treat sleep more like an unwelcome interruption than a sacred ritual.
Maybe you’re staring at the ceiling at 3 a.m., mind racing. Maybe you’re dragging through your day on five hours of fitful sleep, wondering why that third cup of coffee isn’t helping. Maybe you know sleep matters, but between work, family, and everything else demanding your attention, it keeps getting pushed to the bottom of the priority list.
Here’s the thing: sleep isn’t a luxury. It’s where your body recovers, repairs, and rebuilds.
And if you want to unlock better sleep? The answer might not be what you’d expect. It’s not a supplement, a gadget, or even a meditation app (though those can be helpful if used properly).
The answer is strength training.
Don’t Sleep on the Importance of Sleep
Most adults need 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night—not just time in bed, but actual, restorative sleep that leaves you feeling refreshed. When you sleep, your brain and body don’t shut down. Rather, they shift into a different gear. While you’re unconscious, internal processes work overtime.
Your muscles grow and repair. Growth hormone is naturally released during sleep, enabling muscle recovery and regeneration. If you’re strength training but not sleeping well, you’re leaving serious gains on the table.
Your brain consolidates memories and processes emotions. Without enough sleep, you struggle to focus, recall details, and regulate your mood. Chronic sleep deprivation increases your risk of anxiety and depression fivefold.
Your heart gets a break. Blood pressure drops during sleep, giving your cardiovascular system time to reset. Poor sleep keeps blood pressure elevated longer, increasing your risk of heart disease and stroke by 30-45%.
Your blood sugar stabilizes. During deep sleep, glucose levels drop, allowing your body to reset insulin sensitivity. Skip that deep sleep stage, and you’re more likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
Your immune system strengthens. Sleep allows your body to produce infection-fighting cytokines. Skimp on sleep, and you’re far more susceptible to getting sick.
Why Your Bedtime Rituals Might Be a Nightmare
Before we get to what helps your sleep, let’s first examine what might be disrupting it.
Your Phone
That nightly scroll through social media? It’s doing more damage than you think. Studies show that more than an hour of “in-bed” screen time is linked to insomnia, anxiety, and shorter sleep duration overall.
Your circadian rhythm—your body’s natural 24-hour cycle—is most sensitive to light in the evening. When it gets dark, your brain produces melatonin to promote sleep. But LED light from phones, tablets, and TVs suppresses melatonin production, tricking your brain into thinking it’s still daytime.
The fix? Switch it to “Bedtime Mode.” Or consider putting your phone “to bed” before you do. Leave it in another room and cease scrolling 30-60 minutes before sleep. If you can’t resist, wear blue light filter glasses.
Late-Night Eating and Drinking
That glass of wine might feel like it’s helping you relax, but alcohol disrupts REM sleep, the restorative stage where your brain consolidates memories and processes emotions. You might fall asleep faster, but you’ll wake up less rested. Alcohol also suppresses breathing and can trigger sleep apnea.
Late-night snacking has its own problems. Eating close to bedtime increases your risk of weight gain, higher caloric intake, and gastroesophageal reflux (GERD)—all of which disrupt sleep quality.
The fix? If you drink, limit it to one small serving earlier in the evening (not as a sleep aid). Finish eating at least 2-3 hours before bed.
Exercise Timing
Vigorous exercise within an hour of bedtime can actually impair sleep quality. Your body needs time to cool down and shift from “go mode” to “rest mode.”
The fix? Schedule your high-intensity workouts—like FastFit sessions—earlier in the day. Ideally, wrap up at least one hour before bed.
Enter Strength Training
Here’s where things get interesting: regular, intense strength training is one of the most effective sleep aids available. And unlike medications or supplements, it has zero negative side effects.
Research shows that strength training improves sleep quality in less than 10 weeks—and often much sooner. In one Harvard-led study, adults around 70 years old who performed brief, high-intensity strength training three days per week experienced a 40% improvement in sleep quality after just 10 weeks.
Even better? Every single participant either improved or stayed the same. Not one person experienced worse sleep.
Here’s why it works.
1. Your Body Needs to Want Sleep
When you strength train with proper intensity, you create physical demand. Your muscles have worked hard. Your nervous system has been activated. Your body needs to recover.
Sleep stops being optional and starts being physiologically necessary. You’re not trying to force yourself to sleep—your body is asking for it.
2. Strength Training Releases Stress
You can’t always control the stress in your life. But you can move your body in ways that process that stress. Strength training releases the tension and energy buildup that keeps you wired at night. It regulates cortisol (your stress hormone), helping your nervous system calm down naturally.
3. Metabolic and Hormonal Balance
Regular strength training improves blood sugar regulation, insulin sensitivity, and appetite hormones (leptin and ghrelin). When your metabolism is functioning well, your body sends clearer signals about when to eat, when to rest, and when to sleep.
4. Deep Sleep Gets Deeper
Strength training doesn’t just help you fall asleep—it improves sleep architecture. You spend more time in deep, slow-wave sleep, which is when your body does its most critical repair work: tissue regeneration, hormone regulation, and immune system support.
Golden Slumbers Begin with Rituals and Environment
In Atomic Habits, author James Clear stresses the importance of designing your environment to help make new habits stick. There are lots of ways to do this with your end-of-day or bedtime rituals.
Think of rituals as habits that aim you toward a certain outcome. We all have our bedtime rituals. The question is, are they intentional and optimized?
Here are a handful of things that can optimize both your wind-down rituals and physical environment. When combined with regular strength training, these can help you reset your sleep quality.
Mind your evening routine. Finish eating 2-3 hours before bed. Limit alcohol. Consider magnesium supplementation (talk to your doctor first). Create a wind-down ritual that signals to your body it’s time to rest.
Go to bed earlier. This is the biggest thing you can do to improve your sleep. One hour of sleep before midnight is the same as two hours of sleep after midnight. Don’t procrastinate bedtime. Listen to your body. The logs are ready for sawing.
Cool it down. Keep your bedroom between 66-68°F. Your body needs to drop in temperature to fall asleep. Hot flashes or night sweats? Consider a personal fan or cooling sheets.
Make it dark. Your room should be as dark as possible. Invest in blackout curtains or a quality sleep mask. Even small amounts of light can disrupt melatonin production.
Create tech boundaries. Bedrooms are for sleep (and sex). That’s it. No scrolling. No work emails. Consider buying an actual alarm clock so your phone can stay out of the room entirely.
Time your workouts right. Strength train 2-3 times per week—just not right before bed. FastFit sessions are only 20 minutes, so they’re easy to fit into a lunch break or morning routine.
Sweet Dreams Are Made of 20 Minutes, 2-3x per Week
Here’s what makes FastFit uniquely effective for sleep improvement: you get maximum results in minimum time.
Because FastFit uses responsive resistance technology that matches your exact strength capacity throughout every rep, you create deep muscle fatigue and metabolic stress in just 20 minutes. No wasted sets. No inefficient exercises. Just pure, effective stimulus that tells your body: You worked hard. Now go recover.
You’re not spending hours in the gym. You’re not adding to your already-packed schedule. You’re showing up twice a week for 20 minutes—and your body rewards you with deeper, more restorative sleep.
Create the Positive Feedback Loop
Strength training and sleep reinforce and complement each other.
Better strength training leads to better sleep, which leads to better recovery, which leads to better strength gains.
When you’re sleeping well…
- Your muscles repair and grow more efficiently
- Your hormones regulate more effectively
- Your mood stabilizes
- Your stress decreases
- Your energy increases
- Your next workout is more productive
It’s a positive, virtuous feedback loop. Each element reinforces the others.
You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need expensive gadgets or complicated protocols. You just need to show up consistently for effective strength training—and give your body the conditions and stimulus needed to rest.
Twenty minutes. Twice a week. Better sleep. Stronger body.
References
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Zhu B, Quinn L, Kapella MC, et al. Relationship between sleep disturbance and self-care in adults with type 2 diabetes. Acta Diabetol. 2018;55(9):963-970. doi:10.1007/s00592-018-1181-4
University Hospitals Case Medical Center. (2011, February 8). Lack of sleep found to be a new risk factor for colon cancer. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 12, 2021 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110208112741.htm
Sushanth Bhat, Genevieve Pinto-Zipp, Hinesh Upadhyay, Peter G. Polos. “To sleep, perchance to tweet”: in-bed electronic social media use and its associations with insomnia, daytime sleepiness, mood, and sleep duration in adults. Sleep Health, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2018, Pages 166-173, ISSN 2352-7218.
Blume, C., Garbazza, C. & Spitschan, M. Effects of light on human circadian rhythms, sleep and mood. Somnologie 23, 147–156 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11818-019-00215-x
Reid KJ, Baron KG, Zee PC. Meal timing influences daily caloric intake in healthy adults. Nutr Res. 2014;34(11):930-935. doi:10.1016/j.nutres.2014.09.010
Fujiwara Y, Machida A, Watanabe Y, et al. Association between dinner-to-bed time and gastro-esophageal reflux disease. Am J Gastroenterol. 2005;100(12):2633-2636. doi:10.1111/j.1572-0241.2005.00354.x
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