It’s the middle of the afternoon and you’re exhausted, especially if you suffer from a sleep disorder like insomnia or middle-of-the-night insomnia. Since napping is probably not a possibility with an afternoon of kid activities and driving left to do, you take the easy way out and buy a large coffee or energy drink to combat sleep disorder exhaustion.

10 to 20 minutes of low impact exercise is all you need to gain energy for the rest of the day and to help put you to sleep at night. While it may seem that moving about when you are exhausted is the quickest route to feeling more exhausted, the opposite is true according to experts.

Here are 3 insomnia reducing exercise tips to gain energy during the day:

1. Walk instead of waiting in the car for kids.  In experiments conducted at California State University, a brisk 10-minute walk not only increased energy, but the effects lasted up to two hours.  And, when the daily 10-minute walks continued for 3 weeks, overall energy levels and mood were lifted.

2.  Squeeze your shoulder when sitting in a car pick-up line.  Relax your shoulder and neck muscles and squeeze your shoulder blades together 30 times.  Next do 30 shoulder raises but remember to keep your neck muscles relaxed.

3.  Tone your Thighs.  Another great car exercise.  Squeeze your thighs and ankles together as hard as you can.  Hold for 15 seconds (eventually working up to 30 seconds) and release.  Repeat 10-20 times. If you find this too easy then you can increase the toning effect by squeezing a ball between your legs.

Before you know it, you will be using your car and parking lot time as exercise opportunities. Your shoulders, thighs, abs, and butt will all benefit and you will sleep better from these seratonin inducing exercises.