You’ve pulled an all-nighter to hit work deadlines and now you’re wondering whether to hit that early morning gym class as planned.
The short answer is: probably not. Working out on no sleep increases your risk of injuries, lowers your athletic performance, and impairs your recovery — that’s not even mentioning it probably won’t feel great.
Below, we’ll dive into whether you should work out on no sleep (or little sleep) and if you do decide to exercise, how you can do it safely. Plus, we’ll share how you can use the RISE app to get more sleep to improve your workouts, weight loss, and overall health and well-being.
“If you’ve pulled an all-nighter, working out is not the best idea as you’ll be putting yourself at risk of injury," says Dr. Chester Wu. "If you do want to exercise, choose something gentle and easy, like an at-home yoga session or a slow jog around the block. In general, exercise can help you fall asleep at night, so you do want to make time for it in your week, but when you’re sleep deprived, consider using that time to catch up on sleep instead.”
Dr. Chester Wu is double board certified in Psychiatry and Sleep Medicine, and provides sleep medicine services, medication management, and psychotherapy to adults at his private sleep medicine and psychiatry practice.
It’s not a great idea to work out if you’ve had no sleep. Exercising when sleep deprived can increase your risk of injury, you probably won’t perform well physically, and your recovery and muscle growth will be impaired. You’ll have less energy to perform a good quality workout and your body burns fewer calories when it’s sleep deprived.
On the flip side, exercise can help to improve your sleep, so if you’ve had some sleep and are just a little sleep deprived, working out may be a good thing.
Exercise may also mitigate some negative effects of sleep deprivation in the short term, such as reductions in glucose tolerance and mitochondrial respiratory function (the cellular process of energy conversion); however, the long-term impacts remain unclear.
Depending on how sleep deprived you are, you might want to opt for low-intensity workouts, like gentle cardio over strength training.
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A lack of sleep can affect your workout. It can increase your risk of injury, lower your physical performance and motivation, impair your recovery and muscle growth, and in the long term, it can lead to weight gain and health conditions.
Here’s more on how sleep can affect your workouts.
When you’re sleep deprived, you might not be concentrating on the road while cycling and your form while doing heavy squats might get sloppy. This can lead to accidents and injuries.
One study looked at how two groups reacted to 30 hours of no sleep. One group did no exercise during this time and the other group exercised on a stationary bike.
Sleep deprivation was linked to significant changes in energy, fatigue, and depression — as you might imagine. But those who exercised were more vulnerable to mood disturbances and reduced reaction times.
The study concluded, “This could result in greater risk of accident due to a reduced capacity to respond quickly.”
It’s not just the day after, either. If you regularly skip sleep for workouts, your risk of injury will be higher. One study found student athletes who slept on average less than eight hours a night were 1.7 times more likely to have had an injury compared with athletes who slept for eight hours or more.
Heads-up: After a night of not getting enough sleep, your body produces more of the stress hormone cortisol. This hormone makes you feel more alert, which can trick you into thinking you’re feeling fine after no sleep. Even with this false sense of energy, your odds of injury could still be high, so take it easy.
Chronically high cortisol levels can lead to health issues like obesity, high blood pressure, and an increased risk of having a stroke or heart attack.
You can learn more about the link between cortisol and sleep here.
You probably won’t be getting any PBs after a bad night’s sleep.
Research suggests your reaction time can be slower and your blood pressure post-exercise can be higher when you exercise after an all-nighter compared to exercising after a normal night of sleep. The study concluded that “physical performance is significantly affected” by an all-nighter.
An older study found an all-nighter might not affect your aerobic, anaerobic, or muscle strength performance, but time to exhaustion when exercising decreases when you’re sleep deprived.
And a 2022 study found skill-based physical performance was more affected by sleep deprivation than endurance and strength. Or in real-world terms, you might not perform great at your weekly volleyball game, but your Sunday long run won’t suffer as much.
The link can go both ways, too. If you get more sleep, you may perform better physically.
One study found getting more sleep helped basketball players sprint faster, react quicker, and shoot more accurately.
And another small study found athletes who aimed for 10 hours of sleep and reduced their sleep debt ran faster in sprinting drills and were more accurate in tennis serves.
Heads-up: Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body. If you don’t meet your sleep need — the genetically determined amount of sleep you need — you’ll start building up sleep debt.
Check RISE to find out how much sleep you need and how much sleep debt you have. We recommend keeping your sleep debt below five hours to feel and perform at your best.
Beyond your actual physical abilities, high sleep debt can lead to brain fog, poor decision-making skills, and digestive issues — all of which can lead to a less-than-great performance during your workout.
You’ll likely feel low on motivation after a bad night’s sleep — whether that was a night of no sleep at all or just not enough sleep as you need.
You might procrastinate your workout and even when you muster up the motivation to get to the gym or lace up your trainers, you may find it harder to push through a tough strength session or stick to your marathon training plan that day.
You could end up doing a poor-quality workout and it’ll feel like a slog to get through. And this can lead to you skipping future workouts — not good for your overall health and well-being — or cramming in extra sessions to make up for the poor-quality ones — which can lead to overtraining injuries.
Again, the link may go both ways. One small study on people with insomnia found regular exercise helped them get more sleep, and more sleep was linked to doing more exercise the next day.
It’s not just low motivation that makes your workouts feel harder when sleep deprived.
One study found after a night of total sleep deprivation participants doing a cycling test had slower reaction times, reached physical failure faster, and had a higher rate of perceived exertion, which is how hard you feel like you’re working during exercise.
Translation: your usual workout can feel harder than it would have if you had gotten more sleep.
And if you get more sleep, it can make your workouts feel easier.
One small study found when participants got more sleep — almost 10 hours of sleep instead of about eight hours — their time to exhaustion increased. After a night of total sleep deprivation, the rate of perceived exertion was lower if participants had been getting 10 hours of sleep before this all-nighter compared to getting eight hours.
Sleep deprivation can also make us feel pain more acutely — making any exercise feel harder.
You can’t build muscle as well without sleep.
When you lift weights or push yourself through the last mile, you essentially break down your muscle cells. Your body secretes human growth hormone (HGH) when you sleep. This hormone is crucial to post-workout recovery and helps your muscles build up stronger and bigger over time.
But when you pass up on snooze time, you deprive your body of the chance to rest and recuperate to build muscles and bulk up your body weight. Research from 2021 found that just one night of no sleep reduced muscle protein synthesis (the process of building new muscle) by a whopping 18%!
If you’re working out to lose weight or keep your weight in check, regularly skipping sleep for the gym is not the way to do it.
When you’re sleep deprived, levels of ghrelin (the hunger hormone) increase while levels of leptin (the satiety hormone) decrease. This can lead to you feeling hungrier and eating more.
Your brain’s prefrontal cortex — which controls your impulse control — also takes a hit when sleep deprived. This makes it harder to resist junk food and cravings, even if you’ve got the discipline to get to the gym.
Researchers have found that restricting yourself to only five hours of sleep could cause you to consume up to 385 more calories the next day (this is taking into account the extra calories you might burn by being awake for longer). While that may not seem like a large amount, greater sleep loss over time can escalate the calorie count.
Besides that, sleep debt is scientifically proven to reduce your energy expenditure the next day. Not only do you burn fewer calories due to a reduced resting metabolic rate, but you also have less energy to tackle your training.
If you regularly skip sleep for exercise (or anything else), you’re more likely to regain any weight you’ve lost, too. A 2023 study found people with short sleep durations were more likely to regain weight in the year after weight loss compared to people who got enough sleep during this year.
Learn more about the connection between weight and sleep here.
In general, exercise is good for your sleep. A 2023 systematic review found that regular exercise can lead to improved sleep quality and reduced sleep latency (taking less time to time to fall asleep). Regular moderate-intensity physical activities were found to be the most effective at improving sleep.
Research shows exercise can:
So if you’re having trouble sleeping or suffer from a sleep disorder, you don’t want to keep skipping workouts. These workouts could help you get adequate sleep. And of course, you know exercise is good for your overall health. So you don’t want to stop exercising altogether.
Exercise can also help you feel more energized, which is ideal after a bad night’s sleep. Regular exercise can lead to less fatigue and more energy during the day (which can make you more likely to work out to begin with).
Research shows 10 minutes of low-to-moderate intensity exercise can give you more energy than 50 milligrams of caffeine and just 30 seconds of exercise can help you shake off sleep inertia in the morning. (Sleep inertia is the grogginess you feel right after waking up, and it’ll feel worse when you haven’t had enough sleep).
You can learn more about why exercise is good for your sleep here.
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Ideally, you’d get enough sleep and exercise during the day. When that’s not possible, here’s our guide on when to choose sleep or a workout:
Heads-up: More research needs to be done into working out on no sleep. There is not much research in which exercise and sleep deprivation are studied and compared together. The research we do have also varies a lot in its definition of “no” sleep — after all, this could mean an all-nighter, six hours of sleep when you need eight, or long-term sleep deprivation.
If you’re going to work out on no sleep, here’s how to do it safely and without impacting your performance or next night of sleep too much:
Both sleep and exercise are important for your overall health. If you’ve had enough sleep, getting up and working out will be better for you than snoozing your alarm several times. If you haven’t had enough sleep, however, forcing yourself up after a night of poor sleep to hit the gym could do more harm than good.
You’ll be more likely to get injured when you’ve had less sleep than you need, and you probably won’t do a good quality workout.
And the reasons you’re working out in the first place — weight loss, muscle growth, getting better at a sport, feeling more energized, improving your mood — will be compromised if you’re sleep deprived. So you’re probably better off getting more sleep and scheduling your workout for later that day or the next day.
When it comes to cognitive decline, both sleep and exercise can reduce your risk of dementia — but you need both. A 2023 paper states, “sufficient physical activity and good sleep are each essential for maintaining cognitive health as adults age.”
A lack of sleep can lead to low energy, trouble concentrating, and irritability in the short term, and high blood pressure, obesity, and a lowered immune system in the long run. So you don’t want to make a habit of choosing exercise over sleep.
Of course, there are plenty of benefits of exercise, too. But it’s hard to say whether exercise or sleep is more beneficial for us. There aren’t many studies comparing the two and how they impact a range of health metrics. So, for now, we just know they’re both incredibly important.
If you do skip out on sleep to exercise, make sure you’re getting more sleep to catch up on shut-eye when you can. The National Sleep Foundation now recommends trying to keep a regular sleep schedule, but catching up with weekend sleep when you miss out on sleep in the week.
You can learn more about catching up on sleep here.
In general, you’ll need the same amount of sleep whether you work out or not. This amount is known as your sleep need. It’s determined by genetics and set from early adulthood. And it’s not simply eight hours!
To demonstrate just how much sleep needs can vary, we looked at 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up. Their sleep needs ranged from a tiny five hours to a whopping 11 hours 30 minutes.
RISE uses a year’s worth of your phone use data and proprietary sleep-science-based models to work out your sleep need. Aim to get this amount of sleep on both your workout and rest days. You want to consistently meet your sleep need to make the most of your workouts and achieve your health goals.
Learn more about how much sleep you need here.
In general, you don’t need more sleep if you exercise. Your sleep need stays the same from about early adulthood.
The one caveat? You may need more sleep when you’ve done intense exercise. One study found athletes got more overall sleep and more deep sleep in the four nights after completing a 92-kilometer race.
This suggests you may need more sleep after this intensity of workout. So your usual 30-minute spin class might not make a difference, but you might need more sleep after completing an Ironman.
You may also need more sleep when:
If exercising on little sleep is a regular occurrence for you, focus on your sleep hygiene to get more sleep.
Sleep hygiene is the name for the daily habits that can help you fall and stay asleep.
Here’s what to do:
RISE can guide you through 20+ sleep hygiene habits. The app will tell you when to do these habits each day to make them the most effective for you.
The bottom line is working out with no sleep isn’t a great idea. It can up your odds of injury and when you don’t get enough sleep, your physical performance, recovery, and muscle gains will suffer.
After an all-nighter, you’re probably better off taking a rest day. Working out can help you feel more energized and get more sleep the next night, however, so some exercise can be good for you, especially if you’ve had some sleep the night before.
Depending on how sleep deprived you are, opt for a short, low-risk, low-intensity workout.
The RISE app can tell you how much sleep you need and how much debt you have. RISE can also guide you through 20+ sleep hygiene habits to help you get more sleep.
Your workouts — and everything else in life — will thank you. And you can see the benefits fast: 80% of RISE users report better sleep within five days
In general, you’re probably better off skipping your workout when you’ve had no sleep. Exercising after an all-nighter increases your odds of injury. You’ll also have lower physical performance, recovery, and muscle growth when you don’t get enough sleep. If you’ve had some sleep, exercise can help you get more energy, maintain your health, and improve your next night of sleep. Opt for gentle and low-intensity workouts, like yoga or jogging, over high-risk or high-intensity workouts, like strength training or rock climbing.
You might not want to work out on 5 hours of sleep. Working out on 5 hours of sleep (or any amount of sleep that isn’t enough for you) will increase your risk of injury and lower your physical performance, recovery, and muscle growth. Exercise can help you get more energy and sleep better, however, so you might want to do some gentle easy exercise, like yoga or a slow jog, and catch up on sleep when you can.
You probably shouldn’t work out after pulling an all-nighter. You’ll be upping your odds of injury and your physical performance, recovery, and muscle growth will be lower. If you do work out, choose a low-risk and low-intensity workout, like yoga over strength training, and catch up on sleep when you can.
One night of no sleep can affect gains. Research from 2021 found that just one night of no sleep reduced muscle growth by 18%. A night of no sleep can also increase your risk of injury and lower your recovery and physical performance.
In general, it’s best to sleep when tired if you haven’t been getting enough sleep recently. Working out when sleep deprived can increase your odds of injury and it probably won’t be a good quality workout anyway. However, if you’re feeling tired when you wake up or during the day, a short burst of exercise can help you get more energy.
Both sleep and exercise are vital for your overall health. If you’re choosing between sleep and exercise, prioritize getting enough sleep and schedule your exercise for another time or day. Exercising when sleep deprived ups your odds of injury, and it probably won’t be a good quality workout. If you’ve had enough sleep, make sure to exercise. This is not only good for your overall health, it can help you sleep better at night.
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