Claire Zulki, a 44-year-old freelance writer from Chicago, has a regular morning routine: She drops the kids off at school, turns on the TV to her favorite show, and begins a full-body workout. Having finished, Zulki takes a shower and gets to work.
Megan Culley, on the other hand, works out all day before hitting the gym on her way home. The 32-year-old graphic designer from Maryland is a “slow starter” in the morning, he says, and finds it difficult to move early in the day.
Everyone gets their workout, but is one time of day better than another?
Think about your fitness goals
A a little research from Skidmore College examined the benefits of morning and evening exercise for both women and men. Paul J. Arciero, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Health and Human Physiology at Skidmore, was the lead investigator.
“We forced the groups to follow the same multimodal routine, randomly dividing them into evening and morning groups,” he says. “We found that women and men responded differently to different types of exercise depending on the time of day, which surprised us.”
A study found that for women who want to lower their blood pressure or reduce belly fat, morning exercise is best. For those women looking to build upper body muscle mass, endurance, or improve their overall mood, evening workouts should be considered.
For male participants, the results were somewhat opposite: evening exercise reduced blood pressure, the risk of heart disease and fatigue, although, like women, they burned more fat with morning exercise. More research is needed to understand the reasons for these results.
According to Arciero, the ideal option is to tailor your workouts to the time of day when you can get the most bang for your buck. “If you’re a woman, you might want to do your cardio in the morning and your strength training in the evening,” he says.
Early risers vs night owls
“For many people, [the best time to exercise] will depend on their chronotype,” says Jennifer J. Hayes, Ph.D., assistant professor of kinesiology at McMaster University and author Move your body, heal your mind.
Chronotype is your body’s natural tendency to sleep at a certain time. This is what determines whether you are a night owl or an early bird. For the 25% of the population who consider themselves night owls, it can be difficult to get enough sleep and exercise at the same time, Hayes said.
“Studying at night can sometimes be challenging in keeping with social norms,” she explains. “Sure, you can stay up until midnight and exercise late into the night, but if you have to be out the door at 7 the next morning, you won’t get much sleep.”
Sleep, which gives your body the time it needs to recover and benefit from your workouts, should always be a priority when it comes to training. Regardless of the research on the benefits of certain exercises at certain times of the day, your results will be diminished if you don’t get enough sleep.
How to change your workout time
Whether your goal is to change your daily routine to align with Arciero’s findings about the time of day to exercise, or simply to make exercise more convenient, even if it conflicts with your chronotype, Hayes says it’s possible.
“For example, if you want to transition into a morning routine, the good news is that both sun and exercise can reset your biological signals,” she says. “Combine the two by exercising outside in the sunshine for a powerful effect.”
For older adults who tend to sometimes wake up too early and not fall back asleep, evening exercise may be a desirable transition. “It may help you fall asleep later and stay asleep longer,” says Hayes.
If you’re concerned that evening workouts will affect your ability to fall asleep, switch your workouts to a gentler form of exercise, such as yoga. Avoid vigorous exercise, such as running, which can raise your heart rate and make it difficult to relax.
For Callie, who does evening workouts, the trick is to work out on the way home from work, which is far enough away from her bedtime so as not to affect her sleep. “If I had gone home first, I probably wouldn’t have exercised,” she admits. “But then I have the whole evening to relax.”
Regardless of when you choose to exercise, Arciero says it’s most important to take a multimodal approach. For his research, Arciero developed a program that does just that, called RISE—Resistance Training, Sprint Interval Training, Stretching, and Endurance. “We found that when doing each type of exercise once a week, adherence to the exercise regimen was higher, as were benefits,” he explains.
More about training and exercises: