My upstairs neighbor exercises on the roof deck before sunrise, and the impact wakes us. How do we ask for change without banning exercise?

At 5:45 most mornings, a rhythmic thud begins above our bedroom.

The resident upstairs uses the shared roof deck for jump-rope intervals and weighted exercises before work. The sound is not loud in the air, but each landing travels through the structure.

At first we blamed plumbing. Once the weather warmed, we saw the routine from the courtyard and matched it to the vibration.

The neighbor chose the roof to avoid disturbing the apartment below hers. She uses a padded mat and says the deck is a common amenity open at all hours. I appreciate that she already tried to reduce impact. The current solution simply moves it through a different part of the building.

I do not want to challenge quiet stretching, walking or ordinary roof use. Jumping and dropping weights are different because they create repeated structural impact directly above sleeping rooms.

I plan to ask her to move high-impact exercises to a later time or another location and reserve early mornings for movements that do not thud. We can test the padded setup together from our bedroom so she hears what the mat does and does not prevent.

Management has never published roof-deck hours. That gap makes a direct conversation worthwhile, but a building rule may be needed if residents disagree about what “open” means before sunrise.

My partner wants to request no workouts on the roof at all. That seems broader than the evidence supports. The problem is a specific exercise type, time and transmission path.

Would you propose quiet hours, demonstrate the impact or ask management to identify permitted roof uses? How can we describe vibration that wakes us without making a neighbor feel watched for exercising?