For men, evening exercise lowers blood pressure, the risk of heart disease, and feelings of fatigue, and burns more fat, compared to morning exercise.

Multimodal (RISE) Exercise Improves Our Physical And Mental Strength

To explore more, researchers recruited 30 women and 26 men to participate. All were between 25 and 55 years old, healthy, highly active, nonsmokers, and with normal weight.

Advertisement

They were trained by coaches over 12 weeks, following the RISE program previously developed by Arciero et al.: depending on the day of the week, either 60min of resistance (R) training, sprint interval (I) training, stretching (S) training, or endurance (E) training.

Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays were rest days. The participants followed a specially designed meal plan with a protein intake between 1.1 and 1.8g per kg body weight per day.

Importantly, female and male participants had been independently randomized beforehand to either of two regimes: exclusively training in the morning (60min between 06:30 and 08:30), or the evening (between 18:00 and 20:00).

Those assigned to morning exercise breakfasted after exercise and ate three further meals at four-hour intervals. Those assigned to evening exercise ate three meals at four-hour intervals before training, plus another afterward.

At the start and end of the trial, participants were comprehensively assessed for their aerobic power, muscular endurance, flexibility, balance, upper and lower body strength and power, and jumping ability.

Only 16% of the 56 enrolled participants dropped out throughout the 12-week trial, exclusively because they were unable to adhere to this nutrition and exercise schedule.

Besides changes in the participants’ physical and metabolic parameters such as blood pressure, arterial stiffness, respiratory exchange ratio, and the bodily distribution and percentage of fat over the trial, the researchers also measured changes in relevant blood biomarkers.

They also administered questionnaires to the participants, to quantify changes in mood and feelings of food satiety. ll participants improved in overall health and performance throughout the trial, irrespective of their allocation to morning or evening exercise.

This demonstrates the benefits of both morning and evening multimodal (RISE) exercise to improve cardiometabolic and mood health, as well as physical performance outcomes in women and men.

But they also show that ETOD determines the strength of improvements in physical performance, body composition, cardiometabolic health, and mood.

Different Exercise Timing For Women And Men

Based on our findings, women interested in reducing belly fat and blood pressure, while at the same time increasing leg muscle power should consider exercising in the morning.

However, for women interested in gaining upper body muscle strength, power, and endurance, as well as improving overall mood state and food intake, evening exercise is the preferred choice.

Conversely, evening exercise is ideal for men interested in improving heart and metabolic health, as well as emotional wellbeing.

ETOD should be an important consideration for anyone, women, and men, given its effects on the strength of physiological outcomes of exercise. But regardless of ETOD, regular exercise is essential for our health.

Source: Medindia