Exercise is good for you regardless of time of day, but new randomized controlled trials have shown that sweating in the morning and evening can target different parts of your body and mind. ..
Over a 12-week period, 27 healthy and active women and 20 healthy and active men participated in a rigorous diet and training program.
The weekly routine included four days of exercise, including sprints, resistance training, stretching, and endurance training, and three days of rest on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Half of the group did one hour of daily exercise the morning before breakfast and the other half completed the routine before dinner in the evening.
All participants eventually showed significant improvements in fitness and health, but morning and evening exercise had different results, especially for women.
Female participants who exercised in the morning burned 7% more abdominal fat and reduced blood pressure by 7% than women who exercised in the evening. The morning routine also brought greater leg strength.
Women who exercised in the evening, on the other hand, had significantly improved upper body strength, mood, and cravings for food. In addition, my strength improved by 29% and my endurance improved by 15% compared to the morning exerciser.
Compared to women, men under study were generally less affected by exercise time. That said, evening training resulted in slightly lower blood pressure and increased fat oxidation compared to morning exercise. Night training also improved fatigue by 55%.
“Based on our findings, women who are interested in lowering tummy fat and blood pressure while at the same time increasing leg strength should consider exercising in the morning, but upper body strength. Women who are also interested in improving strength and endurance, exercise at night is a good choice because it improves overall mood and food intake, “explains Paul Alciero, a physiologist at Skidmore University.
“On the contrary, evening exercise is ideal for men who are interested in improving heart and metabolic health, as well as emotional health.”
This is the first study to investigate how different exercise therapies affect an individual, depending on the time of day the workout takes place.
Past studies have also shown that morning exercise has different physical outcomes than afternoon and evening exercise, but there are few data on diverse exercise routines and most studies focus only on men. ..
Today, some estimates indicate that female participants are included in only 3% of all sports science studies, and animal studies are often nothing more.
For example, previous studies on mice have shown that morning exercise contributes to fat loss, while evening exercise provides finer control over blood glucose levels. However, this study focused only on male mice that underwent aerobic exercise once.
The new long-term study will include both men and women, but sample sizes are otherwise limited. Almost all of the participants were Caucasian and in good physical condition.
Despite these limitations, findings suggest that the timing of daily exercise has a greater impact on women’s physical performance than on men’s.
It is undecided why that is, but the author has several hypotheses. Previous studies have shown that men and women have different circadian rhythms that affect human physiology and psychology throughout the day.
In fact, every cell in the human body is in sync with its own clock and circulates patterns of activity on an approximately 24-hour basis.
Exercise timing, metabolism and neuromuscular factors to coincide with specific peaks and pits of hormone levels can theoretically affect a person’s strength, cardiovascular system, body composition, and physical performance. I have.
The authors suspect, for example, that fasting nights are somehow stimulating a woman’s body to increase the loss of fat in the morning.
Men who exercise in the evening, on the other hand, work at the peak of their metabolism. This may offer benefits when using body fat as a fuel for night training.
Male participants had the same decrease in body fat regardless of the amount of time they exercised, while those who exercised in the evening had increased fat oxidation. This may indicate that the body is preparing for the actual fat loss in the long run.
Training sessions over 12 weeks will help you determine if that really is the case.
The best time to exercise is still enthusiastically debated, but more diverse and long-term trials, such as today, may help scientists uncover conflicting data collected so far. ..
The study was published in Physiology frontier..
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