Timing Your Workout: Morning Vs. Evening Exercise

By: Laura Peill – (Check out her blog Chronicles of Passion & Facebook)  

If you’re having time getting into a workout routine and finding something you can stick with consistently, maybe it’s time to look at not what you are doing for your workout, but when you are doing it.

Studies show pros and cons to working out in both the evening and the morning, but really, leading to no conclusive recommended time to get the heart rate up. Really, the best time is the time that is best for you, that you will stick with and that you enjoy the most.

Not sure what that is? Let’s compare workout times:

Reasons to Work out in the Morning

Get it done – Exercising in the morning means it’s done and over with and you don’t have to think about it again. If something comes up later, it’s no problems, and if your friends invite you for dinner, you can accept guilt free knowing you already exercised and don’t have to workout that night.

Gives you energy for the day – Start the day off flooding your body with endorphins, repetitively increasing your heart rate and fatiguing all your muscles and you better believe that it wakes you up and gets you energized for the day.

Helps you mentally prepare for the day – Use your time running on the treadmill to think through your day and get your head prepared for whatever it is ahead that you may face. Whether you know that you have a big meeting, or that you have to deal with your not so favorite colleague, it will help to go into your day with a good head space and the right attitude to face what ever gets thrown at you!

Starts your day off healthy so you are less likely to fall off track later – If you workout first thing, you get to hold on to that all day and carry it in the back of your mind, a little proud smile coming across your face every time you think of it. And because you think of it and already went through all that effort this morning, you will be less likely to sabotage it later in the day by eating badly.

Fasted – Fasted workouts are better if you tend to have a hard time working out out after you’ve eaten, or if your energy levels decrease a lot throughout the day. 

Reasons to Work out in the Evening

Helps you sleep better – while this isn’t true for everybody (in fact some people find the opposite), a lot of people have much better success at sleep when they have exercised in the few hours preceding bedtime.

De-stress from the day – There’s nothing like a good sweat session to release all that and pent up stress from the day. Whether you do it through more relaxed methods of exercise like yoga, or heart racing options like running, the stress in your life will be greatly decreased.

More time/less rushed – Some people don’t like the morning workout because it adds extra time pressure, in which they have to finish by a certain time to make it to work, take the kids to school etc. Working out in the evening means that if you want to stay for that class that is 45 minutes long and you’ve already been spinning for 30 minutes, you totally have the time and flexibility to do so.

Better energy levels – If you’re the kind of person who does not do well with mornings, and tends to have a hard time being fully awake until you have been up for 3 hours and had 2 cups of coffee, exercising may make your life more miserable and leave you more tired. Instead, make it happen in the evening when you’ve been up for a long time and you have lots of energy!