Claire Zuelke, a 44-year-old freelance writer from the Chicago area, has an established morning routine: She takes her kids to school, turns the TV on to a favorite show, and gets moving with a full-body workout. Once finished, Zulkey showers and settles down to work.
In contrast, Megan Coley spends a full day working before hitting the gym on her way home. The 32-year-old graphic designer from Maryland describes himself as a “slow start” in the morning and finds it difficult to get moving early in the day.
They each get their own workout, but is one time better than another?
Consider your fitness goals
a Small study Researchers from Skidmore College examined the benefits of morning versus evening exercise for both women and men. Paul J. Arcero, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Human Physiological and Health Sciences at Skidmore University, was the principal investigator.
“We had the groups follow the same multimodal routine, and randomly divided them into evening and morning groups,” he says. “We found that women and men respond differently to different types of exercise depending on the time of day, which surprised us.”
The study revealed that for women who want to lower blood pressure or reduce belly fat, exercising in the morning is best. Those women seeking to gain upper body muscle, endurance, or improve overall mood should consider evening exercise.
For male participants, the results were somewhat reversed: evening exercise reduced blood pressure, heart disease risk, and feelings of fatigue, while they, like women, burned more fat with morning exercise. To understand the reasons behind the findings, more research is needed.
What would be ideal, Arcero says, is to adjust your workouts to the time of day when you can get the most bang for your buck. “If you’re female, you might want to do cardio in the morning and strength training in the evening,” he says.
Early birds vs. night owls
Jennifer J says: “For many people,[the best time to exercise]depends on their chronotype,” said Hayes, Ph.D., associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and author of “The Best Time to Exercise.” Move the body, heal the mind.
Chronotype is your body’s natural tendency to sleep at a certain time, which determines whether you’re a night owl or an early riser. For the 25% of the population who consider themselves night owls, getting enough sleep and exercise can be difficult, Hesz says.
“Exercising at night can sometimes be a challenge with societal norms,” she explains. “It’s normal to stay up until midnight and exercise late at night, but if you have to leave the house at 7 a.m. the next morning, you won’t get enough sleep.”
Sleep — which provides your body with the time it needs to recover and make gains from exercise — should always be a priority when it comes to exercise. Regardless of the research conducted on the benefits of certain exercises at certain times of the day, your results will diminish if you do not allow enough time for sleep.
How to change your workout time
If your goal is to change your routine to adhere to Arcero’s time-of-day exercise results, or simply make exercise more convenient even if it conflicts with your chronotype, Hesz says it’s possible.
“If you want to switch to a morning routine, for example, the good news is that sun and exercise can reset your biological signals,” she says. “Combine it all together by exercising outside in the sun, and it has a powerful effect.”
For older adults, who sometimes tend to wake up early and not go back to sleep, exercising in the evening may be a desirable transition. “This may help you fall asleep later and stay asleep longer,” Hesz says.
If you’re concerned that evening exercise will affect your ability to sleep, switch your workouts to gentler forms of exercise, such as yoga. Avoid vigorous exercise such as running, which may increase your heart rate and make it difficult for you to relax.
For Collie’s evening exercise, the trick is to exercise on her way home from work, which is far enough away from bedtime so as not to interfere with her sleep. “If I went home first, I probably wouldn’t exercise,” she admits. “But then I have a whole evening to calm down.”
No matter when you prefer to exercise, what’s most important, according to Arciero, is to include a multimodal approach. For his study, Arcero developed a program that does just that, called RISE — resistance training, interval training, stretching, and endurance training. “We found that when each type of exercise was done once a week, compliance was higher and so was the benefit,” he explains.
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