Strength training may be the most effective exercise for insomnia.
What two recent meta-analyses show about exercise modality and sleep quality, and why the intervention that helps depends on whether you're a good sleeper or not.
Most people default to "cardio for sleep." Go for a run, hit the treadmill, feel tired afterwards. The recent evidence has more texture than that.
A 2024 network meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine pooled 28 randomised trials of middle-aged and older adults. Aerobic exercise ranked highest for overall sleep quality on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, particularly for reducing sleep latency and the use of sleep medication.
A 2025 network meta-analysis in Family Medicine and Community Health looked at the same question in a narrower population: 25 trials of older adults with actual insomnia. In that group, strength training ranked highest for sleep quality improvement. Aerobic ranked second. Combination training ranked third.
The two findings don't contradict each other. They describe two different populations.
If you're a generally healthy adult who wants to sleep marginally better, aerobic and strength both help, with aerobic slightly ahead. If you're an adult who genuinely struggles to sleep, the evidence points to strength training as the primary intervention.
That's a useful reframe for the "I need more cardio to sleep better" reflex that most people carry.
The finding also has a practical implication that's easy to miss. Two well-programmed strength sessions a week are already a piece of most sensible training programmes. If sleep is one of the reasons you train, that piece may be doing more than you thought.
ReferencesGao X et al. Effects of different types of exercise on sleep quality based on Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index in middle-aged and older adults: a network meta-analysis. J Clin Sleep Med, 2024. DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.11106Bahalayothin P et al. Impact of different types of physical exercise on sleep quality in older population with insomnia: a systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. Fam Med Community Health, 2025. DOI: 10.1136/fmch-2024-003056