Claire Zulkey, a 44-year-old Chicago-area freelance writer, has a perfect morning routine: She takes the kids to school, turns the TV to her favorite show, and does a full-body workout. After finishing, Zuki took a shower and got to work.
In contrast, Meghan Cully puts in a full day of work before heading to the gym on her way home. The 32-year-old graphic designer from Maryland is a self-proclaimed “slow starter” in the morning and finds it difficult to get moving early in the day.
Everyone exercises, but is one time of day better than others?
Consider your fitness goals
A small study from Skidmore College examined the benefits of morning and evening exercise for women and men. Dr. Paul J. Arciero, professor in the Department of Health and Human Physiological Sciences at Skidmore, is the principal investigator.
“We had the groups follow the same multimodal routine and randomly divided them into evening groups and morning groups,” he said. “We were surprised to find that women and men respond differently to different types of exercise, depending on the time of day.”
Research shows that for women who want to lower their blood pressure or lose belly fat, exercising in the morning is best. Women who are struggling to increase their upper body muscles, endurance, or overall mood improvement should consider exercising in the evening.
For male participants, the findings were somewhat opposite: Exercise in the evening lowered blood pressure, heart disease risk, and fatigue, while similar to women, they burned more fat when they exercised in the morning. To understand the reasons behind the results, additional research is needed.
The ideal may be to tailor your exercise to the time of day when you’ll get the most benefit, Arciro says. “If you’re a woman, you might want to do cardio in the morning and strength training in the evening,” he says.
Early bird vs. night owl
“For many people, [the best time to exercise] Associate Professor of Kinesiology, McMaster University Move your body and heal your mind.
Sleep chronotype is your body’s natural tendency to sleep at specific times, and it determines whether you’re a night owl or an early bird. For the 25 percent of people who consider themselves night owls, getting enough sleep and enough exercise can be difficult, Heisz said.
“Nocturnal exercise can sometimes challenge social norms,” she explains. “You might naturally stay up late and exercise, but if you have to leave the house at 7 a.m. the next morning, you’re not getting enough sleep.”
Sleep provides your body with the necessary time to recover and benefit from exercise, so it should always be a priority when exercising. Regardless of the research on the benefits of certain exercises at specific times of day, if you don’t get enough sleep, your results will be diminished.
How to adjust exercise time
If your goal is to change your daily habits to follow Arciro’s findings about the time of day to exercise, or simply to make exercise more convenient, even if it doesn’t match your body clock type, then this is a good idea, Heitz says. It is possible.
“For example, if you want to change your morning routine, the good news is that both sunlight and exercise can reset your biosignals,” she says. “Pair them together by exercising outdoors in the sun, and the effects can be powerful.”
For older adults, who sometimes wake up too early and are unable to go back to sleep, the ideal transition may be to exercise in the evening. “This may help you fall asleep later and stay asleep longer,” Heitz said.
If you’re worried that exercising at night will affect your ability to sleep, change your exercise to a gentler form of exercise, such as yoga. Avoid strenuous exercise such as running, which may increase your heart rate and make it harder for you to relax.
For Cully, who exercises in the evening, the secret is to do it on the way home from get off work so that it’s far enough away from bedtime that it doesn’t disrupt her sleep. “If I go home first, I probably won’t exercise,” she admits. “But I can relax all evening.”
Acero believes that no matter when you enjoy exercising, the most important thing is to take a multimodal approach. In his research, Arciero developed a program called RISE to accomplish this goal—resistance training, sprint interval training, stretching, and endurance training. “We found that compliance was higher and the benefits were greater when each type of exercise was done once a week,” he explains.
More information about exercise and exercise:
