Weight Training Best Exercise For Insomnia Among Seniors

Seniors battling insomnia are best off picking up some dumbbells or doing some push-ups, a new evidence review suggests.

Resistance exercise, activities that make muscles work against an external force, appears to be the best means of improving sleep in older adults, researchers found.

“Exercise that strengthens muscles, rather than aerobic or combination exercises, is the most effective way to enhance sleep quality,” concluded the research team led by Dr. Kittiphon Nagaviroj, an associate professor with Ramathibodi Hospital at Mahidol University in Bangkok.

However, the review also found that aerobic exercise or a combination of strength, aerobic, balance and flexibility exercises can also be effective against insomnia, researchers reported March 4 in the journal Family Medicine and Community Health.

Sleep quality tends to decline with age, and up to 1 in 5 seniors has insomnia, seniors said in background notes.

Exercise has been shown to help alleviate insomnia, but it’s not been clear what type of exercise would be most effective, researchers added.

For their review, the researchers pooled data from 25 previous clinical trials involving nearly 2,200 people.

The studies compared aerobic exercises — cycling, dancing, swimming, brisk walking or gardening — against resistance exercises, researchers said. Resistance exercise could include weightlifting or body-weight training like push-ups or planks.

People engaging in resistance exercises had 5.7-point average increase in their sleep quality scores, results show.

By comparison, aerobic exercise improved sleep quality scores by 3.7 points and combination exercise by 2.5 points.

“Exercise, particularly strengthening exercise and aerobic exercise, is beneficial for enhancing subjective sleep quality at a clinically significant level compared with normal activities,” researchers concluded.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on exercising for better sleep.

SOURCE: BMJ, news release, March 4, 2025

Source: HealthDay