Exercise is good for you no matter what time of day it is, but a new randomized control trial found that sweating in the morning and at night could target different parts of the body and mind.
Over the course of 12 weeks, 27 healthy, active women and 20 healthy, active men participated in a strict diet and training program.
The weekly routine involved four days of exercise, including sprints, resistance training, stretching and resistance training, plus three rest days on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday.
Half of the group did their daily hour-long exercises in the morning before breakfast, while the other half completed their routine before dinner in the evening.
All participants ultimately showed significant improvements in their fitness and health, but morning and evening exercises had different results, especially for women.
Female participants who exercised in the morning burned 7% more abdominal fat and lowered their blood pressure 7% more than women who exercised in the evening. The morning routine also resulted in increased leg strength.
Women who exercised at night, on the other hand, showed greater gains in upper body strength, mood, and food cravings. Additionally, muscle strength improved by 29% and endurance improved by 15% compared to those who exercised in the morning.
Compared to women, men in the test were generally less influenced by exercise time. That said, evening training led to slightly lower blood pressure and higher fat oxidation compared to morning exercise. Night training also improved fatigue by 55 percent.
“Based on our findings, women interested in reducing abdominal fat and blood pressure while increasing leg muscle power should consider exercising in the morning. However, women interested in gaining strength, power, and muscular endurance in the upper body also since it improves general mood and food intake, night exercise is the preferred option,” explains physiologist Paul Arciero of Skidmore College.
“By contrast, evening exercise is ideal for men interested in improving heart and metabolic health, as well as emotional well-being.”
The study is the first to explore how a diverse exercise regimen affects people based on the time of day the workout takes place.
past investigations has also found that morning exercise maintains different physical results compared to afternoon or evening exercise, but data on various exercise routines are sparse and most studies have focused only on men.
This day, some estimates suggest Female participants have been included in only 3 percent of all sports science research, and animal studies are often no better.
Previous mouse studies, for example, have found that morning exercise contributes more to fat loss, while evening exercise has more control over blood sugar levels. However, this research only focused on male mice that performed a bout of aerobic exercise.
The new long-term trial includes both men and women, although the sample size is limited in other respects. Nearly all the participants were Caucasian and physically fit.
Despite these limitations, the findings suggest that the timing of daily exercise affects female physical performance to a greater extent than male physical performance.
It is not known why, but the authors have some hypotheses. Previous studies have shown that men and women have different circadian rhythms, which affects a person’s physiology and psychology throughout the day.
In fact, every cell in the human body it is in tune with its own clock, cycling through patterns of activity in approximately 24 hours.
Timing exercise to coincide with certain peaks and dips in hormone levels, metabolism, and neuromuscular factors could, in theory, influence a person’s muscular strength, cardiovascular system, body composition, and physical performance.
The authors suspect, for example, that an overnight fast somehow primes the female body for greater fat loss in the morning.
On the other hand, men who work out at night are working with a raging metabolism. This can provide an advantage when it comes to using body fat as fuel for late-night workouts.
While body fat losses were similar in male participants regardless of time of exercise, those who exercised at night showed greater fat oxidation, which could be a sign that the body is preparing for loss of real fat in the long term.
Training sessions that last longer than 12 weeks could help determine if that’s really the case.
The perfect time to exercise is still hotly debated, but more diverse long-term trials like the current one could help clarify the conflicting data scientists have collected so far.
The study was published in Frontiers in physiology.
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