Is it good to do push ups before bed?

Push-ups before bed are a good thing to do, but ensure keeping your workouts light and short so they don't negatively affect your sleep. For intense workouts, finish at least 1 hour before bedtime if you want to prevent negative consequences for your sleep.

Introduction

Should you do a light workout of push ups before bed, and what are the benefits of doing them before going to sleep?

In this blog post, I'll tell you why doing push-ups before bed is a good thing but also what to watch out for if you do not want your sleep to suffer from doing so.

I'll also describe the benefits I experienced from doing push-ups before bed, so you'll know why you should start doing them, too, and how they'll benefit you.

So, let's get started!

Is it good to do push ups before bed?

Why?

Because to do progressive overloading correctly, your workout will tend to take longer to complete, and they'll require more energy.

As a result, it will hinder your ability to fall asleep right after. Assuming you have work the next day and need to wake up early, falling asleep too late means you won't get enough quality sleep, resulting in fatigue, drowsiness, and irritability the next day...even bad eating habits may find their way when you're sleep deprived!

If you insist on doing an extensive session of push-ups (think of doing multiple sets, multiple variations, and even mixing in exercises for other muscle groups), then ensure there's at least 1 hour between the end of your workout and bedtime, so it won't negatively affect your sleep.

Is 30 push ups a night good?

Doing 30 pushups a night is good and has no disadvantages at all. But a bit of nuance is needed to see if that is the conclusive answer in all situations.

Suppose you do 30 pushups a night, no more, no less. Is that good? Well...(see below)

Results of doing 30 push ups a night

Maintains endurance and strength

If you aim to maintain your current endurance and strength for 30 pushups, doing 30 pushups a night can be beneficial.

This repetition range helps keep your muscles accustomed to the movement and prevents them from losing the ability to perform more reps.

Makes a habit of chest workout

A simple workout routine like 30 pushups before bed can be a great habit to promote consistent physical activity. It's a manageable number that you can easily fit into your daily routine and can contribute to your overall fitness and well-being.

Inefficient for INCREASE in strength/size/endurance

Push ups, like bench pressing, mainly work your chest and triceps muscles. If your goal is to build more strength and endurance in your chest muscles over time, then just doing only 30 pushups a night is not enough.

Instead, you need to progressively increase the intensity of your workouts, which you can do by doing more reps and multiple sets (i.e., doing more volume).

Another way to increase the intensity is by doing alternative hand and body positions: do close- and wide-grip pushups and incline push-ups by placing your feet on a chair (this puts more load on your upper chest and deltoids).

All in all, if you aim to maintain your current fitness level and maintain a good and healthy habit of doing pushups at a set time in the day, then 30 pushups a night can be effective.

However, progressive overloading is necessary if you want to see improvements in chest muscle strength, size, and endurance.

Benefits of doing push ups before bed

What are the benefits of doing push ups before bed?

Before I explain those benefits as I have personally experienced them, I want to emphasize once again that you should not engage in intense, full-blown workouts right before going to bed.

Make sure there is at least 1 hour between the end of an intense and complete workout and the time when you go to sleep.

In other words, when you do push-ups before bed, make sure your workout is no longer than 10 minutes and is light.

Now to the benefits of doing push-ups before bed, as I have experienced personally:

Establishes a routine

I found that the biggest advantage of doing push-ups before bed was that they provided me a routine.

A routine creates structure, even if you have a routine for the smallest things, for example, brushing your teeth.

With a structure to follow, after a while, you'll do it subconsciously without having to stress about what and in which order you do things.

As such, it helps your night routine if every night, the last 30 minutes of the day look the same (push-ups, shower, bed). This will help you fall asleep easier, as there's one thing less your brain needs to pay attention to (which is figuring out what to do right before bedtime).

If you follow the same routine long enough, after a while, you will signal to your body to get into a specific state (in this case, getting ready for sleep) because your body gets used to the same habit you've been doing every night, for many weeks or months in a row.

Improves mental well-being

Exercise helps me kick out all of the stress of daily life and work from my head and restart with a fresh slate of brain power.

If you've had a long day of work, then got in a traffic jam during your commute back home, and had to do cooking at home, some cleaning, and other grinds of daily life....at some point, your head is just full of all the things you did.

These are all tiny bits of stress that build up in your life..and you need to do something about it.

As you may know, exercising, in general, is a great stress reliever. As such, if you start doing push-ups before bed every night, you'll give your body a way to kick the stress out of your system and refresh your mental energy.

Take it from me...this will really help you to relax your mind and fall asleep more easily. Besides...it will grow your chest muscles, make your arms (your triceps in particular) look more muscular, and above all, it will build some strength in your upper body. Who wouldn't want that?!

Feeling good about yourself

Whenever I don't go to the gym or don't do any other type of exercise, such as cardio, I'll feel bad about myself (yes, even on rest days, but I try to FORCE myself to take rest days from working out).

Doing some type of exercise, even if it's just for 10 minutes before going to bed, will instantly make you feel better about yourself compared to doing nothing at all.

Helps to relax

Whenever I don't go to the gym or don't do any other type of exercise, such as cardio, I'll feel bad about myself (yes, even on rest days, but I try to FORCE myself to take rest days from working out).

Doing some type of exercise, even if it's just for 10 minutes before going to bed, will instantly make you feel better about yourself compared to doing nothing at all.

Improves sleep quality

This is a consequence of stress reduction and establishing a night routine, thanks to doing push-ups before bed.

When you go to bed after the same routine and without any mental stress, it becomes much easier to fall asleep than when you're stressed, feeling pains in your body due to bad posture at your desk job, and having an eclectic night routine.

To fall asleep quickly, your body needs to be relaxed, and your mind needs to be free of stressful thoughts (and, of course, your circadian rhythm shouldn't be screwed up, and you shouldn't consume caffeine before bed, of course).

And that's how push-ups before bed help you sleep better (but again, do not do intense workouts less than 1 hour before going to sleep, or it will negatively affect your ability to fall asleep, and thus, your sleep time and quality of sleep!).

What happens if I do 20 push-ups every day?

That's because 20 push-ups really isn't that much. For the untrained individual, doing 20 push-ups in a row seems like a lot (the majority of untrained people can't even do 1 or 2 PROPER push-ups, let alone 20!).

But for even beginner gym goers (anyone with just 2-4 months lifting experience), doing 20 pushups should be possible.....hard, maybe...but possible.

For comparison, when I started exercising, I started with nothing other than push-ups....every-single-day.

After a week, I could do 5 proper push-ups.

Two weeks later, I managed to do 10.

Then, in the 5th or 6th week, I could do 20.....it was really, really hard... But I remember hitting 20 push-ups for the first time in my life...something I deemed impossible in the first week!

Getting stronger with push ups

Don't get me wrong...doing 20 push-ups every day will make you very good at push-ups, and you'll be able to do them VERY fast and with excellent form. It will feel like you're flying through those 20.

However, if you want to be able to do more, for example, multiple sets of 20 push-ups, then you need to increase the load once you master doing just 20 push-ups.

Assuming you're only working out from home and don't have access to weights or dumbbells, the only way to increase your performance is doing more volume....that means more reps and more sets.

Increasing the volume will:

• Make your chest and triceps stronger.
• Make your chest and triceps bigger (make sure to be in a caloric surplus and eat enough protein).
• Increase your muscle endurance in your chest and triceps.
• Make your front deltoids stronger and bigger (as your front deltoids get worked to some extent as well when you do push-ups).

Best rest time for push ups

What is the best rest time for push ups?

As stated before, doing 20-30 pushups for a trained individual isn't that much. However, when doing multiple sets of 20-30 reps, it can get hard after a set or 2 to do those last reps.

You can't do set after set with minimal or no rest time in between...muscle fatigue will kick in, and you won't be able to complete all reps.

So then, how much rest time is needed between push-up sets to complete your 20-30 reps per set?

That depends on how many sets you plan to do. The following self-reported guideline is what works best for me:

• When doing push-ups before bed, I do no more than 3 sets of 20 reps with 45-60 seconds of rest time between each set.
• When doing push-ups as warming up for bench press, I do no more than 3 sets of 15 reps with 20-30 seconds of rest between each set.
• During the time when I was trying to increase my max reps for push ups, I did 4 sets of max reps (which gradually decreased between each rep due to muscle fatigue), with 2-3 minutes of rest between each set.

Conclusion

Doing push-ups before bed is a great way to establish a night routine before going to sleep, as long as you do not do an intense, full-blow workout right before sleep.

The consequence of doing intense exercise sessions right before going to sleep will be that you'll have a tough time falling asleep afterward. And if you need to wake up the next day early for work, the result is that you'll be sleep-deprived the next day.

If you still want to do intense night workouts, ensure there is at least 1 hour between the end of your workout and your bedtime. That way, falling asleep will be easier. But make sure you can sleep in the next day, so plan your week accordingly.

And lastly, with the above considerations in mind, you don't need to be afraid that your weight loss progress will suffer if you do night workouts.

I hope you found this article helpful and that you'll start doing push-ups before bed, too. How many reps and sets do you do before bed?