The review suggests that the timing is even more crucial than previously thought when it comes to sleep and exercise, as it also found that exercising more than two hours before sleep helped people fall asleep more quickly and stay asleep for longer.

According to the study, an increased heart rate is one of the reasons participants found it difficult to sleep shortly after high-intensity exercise, as this led to physiological excitement, which they did not recover from until three hours after they had stopped exercising.

On top of this, the researchers cited fatigue of the central nervous system and changes in body temperature as factors that affect sleep quality after exercise, adding: “In particular, sleep onset may be delayed due to exercise-induced elevation in body temperature.” This is because your body temperature needs to drop slightly in order to facilitate sleep, which could be disrupted if the body temperature is still high due to exercise.

Along with difficulty falling asleep, the study also found that participants who had completed high-intensity exercise two hours before falling asleep woke up several times during the night to urinate, having drank excess water during and after their workouts, which caused sleep disturbance.

Can’t sleep? New research suggests it might be down to your workout routine