Claire Zulkey, 44, a freelance writer in the Chicago area, has a steady morning routine: She takes her kids to school, turns the television on to a favorite show, and moves in with a full-body workout. Once it’s done, Zulkey takes a shower and gets to work.
Meghan Cully, by contrast, does a full day’s work before hitting the gym on her way home. The 32-year-old graphic designer from Maryland describes herself as a “slow starter” in the morning and finds it difficult to get going early in the morning.
Everyone gets their workout, but is one time of day better than another?
Consider your fitness goals
A small study out of Skidmore College examined the benefits of morning and evening exercise for both women and men. Paul J. Arciero, Ph.D., a professor in the department of health and human biology at Skidmore, was the lead investigator.
He says: “We have groups that follow the same multi-modal process, randomly dividing them into night and morning groups. “We found that women and men responded differently to different types of exercise depending on the time of day, which surprised us.”
This study revealed that for women who want to lower blood pressure or reduce belly fat, exercising in the morning works best. Those women striving for upper body muscle gains, endurance, or general mood improvement should consider evening workouts.
For male participants, the findings were somewhat reversed: Evening exercise reduced blood pressure, heart disease risk, and feelings of fatigue, while similar to women, they burned more fat by exercising in the morning. To understand the reasons for the results, more research is needed.
What might be best, says Arciero, is to schedule your workout to be the time of day when you can get the most bang for your buck. “If you’re a woman, then, you might want to do your cardio in the morning, and your strength training in the evening,” she says.
Early birds versus night owls
“For many people, [the best time to exercise] it will depend on their type of sessions,” says Jennifer J. Heisz, Ph.D., associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and author of the book. Improve the Body, Heal the Mind.
Chronotype is your body’s natural tendency to sleep at a certain time—it’s what determines whether you’re a night owl or a morning bird. For the 25 percent of people who consider themselves a night owl, getting enough sleep and getting enough exercise can be difficult, Heisz said.
“Exercising at night can sometimes be a challenge in keeping with social norms,” she explains. Naturally you might stay up until midnight and exercise late at night, but if you have to be out the door the next morning at 7, you’re not getting enough sleep.”
Sleep—which gives your body the time it needs to recover and reap the benefits of exercise—should always be a priority when it comes to exercise. Despite the research on the benefits of exercising at certain times of the day, your results will be diminished if you don’t allow enough time for sleep.
How to change your exercise routine
If your goal is to change your routine to match Arciero’s findings related to the time of day for exercise, or simply to make exercise easier even if it conflicts with your chronotype, Heisz says it’s possible.
“For example, if you’d like to switch to a morning routine, the good news is that both the sun and exercise may restart your natural symptoms,” she said. Combine them with exercise outside in the sun, and it has a powerful effect.”
For older adults, who sometimes tend to wake up too early and not go back to sleep, the desired change may be evening exercise. “This can help with falling asleep later and staying asleep longer,” says Heisz.
If you’re worried that an evening workout will affect your ability to fall asleep, switch your workout to gentler forms of exercise, like yoga. Avoid vigorous exercise like jogging, which can raise your heart rate and make it harder to slow down.
For Cully, who exercises in the evening, the trick is working on the way home from work, separated far enough from bedtime so it doesn’t affect his sleep. “If I went home first, I probably wouldn’t exercise,” he admits. “But I have the rest of my night to finish.”
Regardless of when you choose to exercise, the most important thing, according to Arciero, is to include a multi-modal approach. In his research, Arciero developed a program that does just that, called RISE—resistance training, sprint interval training, stretching, and endurance. “We found that when we did each type of exercise once a week, compliance was higher and so was the benefit,” he explains.
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