In the health and fitness niche, exercise is an extremely important habit to incorporate into your daily routine. Whether your goals are for weight loss or to maintain your health, exercise can make you feel better about yourself. One of the common debates on exercise is whether you should insert exercise in your morning or evening routine. There are certain pros and cons to working out in the morning as it is in the evening, depending on the individual. In this article, both pros and cons will be discussed regarding morning vs. evening exercise.
Morning Exercise: Pros and Cons
Pro #1: You have more energy in the morning
Whether you’re a morning person or not, you’re naturally bound to have more energy in the morning – especially after your morning coffee. Instead of leaving exercise on the evenings for when you’re drained for work, morning exercise gives you the energy to get moving. You’re so pumped up about starting your day, and exercise is the best way to start a productive day. Even a 30-minute morning workout does wonders for your energy and motivation.
Pro #2 You’re more consistent
It’s easy to avoid working out in the evening when you feel exhausted from how your day went. By sticking to a morning workout routine, you can ensure that you’ll be consistent in your workouts. It gives you a routine to stick to that you won’t fall away from since you start your day energized. With the added aspect of the sunlight, your body generally has higher energy than using it at night, for when it’s time to rest and go to bed.
Con #1: It’s difficult to get up
If you’re used to staying up late at night, morning workouts may seem more of a challenge to you. You want to take the extra hour to sleep in, which is why you may lean towards evening exercise. This is the most common reason for people to avoid morning workouts – the effort it takes to get out of bed and start moving. Sleep is critical for muscle repair, so this is a legitimate concern.
Con #2: Your joints are stiffer
Since you’ve just woken up, your muscles and joints are generally stiffer compared to exercising in the evening. It’s for this reason that it’s crucial to stretch first before starting your actual exercise, or you could get injured.
Evening Exercise: Pros and Cons
Pro #1: It’s a stress-reliever from work
Various individuals choose to exercise at night for the reason that exercise is the best way to cope with stress and frustrations at work. Since your day is over, going over to the gym or to do home workouts acts as a healthy coping mechanism from your stresses in life. You generally have a clearer mind compared to morning workouts, when you’re dealing with drowsiness and lack of motivation.
Pro #2: Higher body temperature
As mentioned above, your muscles and joints are generally stiffer in the morning. When you work out in the evening, your muscles and joints are up to 20 percent more flexible than in the morning. You’ll injure yourself less when you engage in evening workouts compared to morning workouts.
Cons #1: It’s harder to fall asleep
Exercise releases endorphins and dopamine in your body, which are body hormones that make you feel good and happy. This may counter the melatonin in your body, which is the hormone that helps you fall asleep. When you exercise too close to your bedtime, you may have difficulty maintaining a healthy sleep pattern. Additionally, if you’re doing an evening workout, you’re likely eating dinner later too, which can disrupt healthy sleep.
Cons#2: Availability
When you wait until after work or the evening to get your fitness in, the activities throughout the day can add up quickly and cause you to skip your workout and attend to more pressing concerns. Additionally, if you’re a gym person, it seems a large population of people prefer to do evening workouts vs. morning workouts. I chalk this up to the inability to get out of bed and get their day going. If you wait until the evening, it’s much more likely the gym equipment you’ll be needing will be occupied by others.
Morning vs. Evening Exercise: Which is Better?
In conclusion, morning workouts are generally much healthier than evening workouts. Not only do you have more energy, but it’s much easier to stick to a morning workout routine than an evening one. The only struggle in a morning workout lies in getting up, but morning workouts feel so good to both your mental and physical health when you maintain that habit. There’s a huge risk that you’ll get lazy and tired to exercise in the evening compared to just getting it over with in the morning.
Your mind is also sharper and clearer in the morning, which makes it the perfect timeframe to insert into your daily routine. A morning workout will give you so many more benefits than an evening workout ever will.
