Health Benefits of Evening Exercise Including Improve Your Sleep

One of the best things you can do to keep your health in good shape is to get enough sleep. Regular exercise has the same benefits. Enough of both reduces the risk of numerous diseases, improves cardiovascular and mental health, protects the brain, and does much more.

But neither sleep nor exercise are available as pills. Both take time, which is frequently insufficient. Some people may go to bed early and wake up early enough to fit in a workout before starting the day’s tasks because of their inherent body clocks, or chronotypes, which determine who is a morning person and who is a night person. Other people can do this because of their job schedules. After all, exercise is frequently recommended as a fantastic way to awaken the body and mind.

However, if you find that fitting in a workout in the evening is the most convenient option, you might worry if doing so won’t endanger your ability to get a good night’s rest and leave you feeling more exhausted the next day.

Fortunately, research indicates that while morning exercise has advantages, evening exercise also has advantages and does not always interfere with your sleep.

“If you have the luxury to be able to pick your time to do this, there are many reasons you’d want to be physically active earlier in the day,” says Marie-Pierre St-Onge, associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and director of Columbia’s Center of Excellence for Sleep & Circadian Research.

Your body clock can be synchronized with morning exercise in the sun, making it simpler to wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night. Additionally, doing exercise in the morning keeps you from skipping it later if life gets busy.

However, if your schedule doesn’t allow for morning exercise, obtaining some nighttime activity can be your best option. St-Onge asserts that “any physical activity is good.”

Even with an evening workout, you may reap the benefits of exercise, including better sleep, if you can allow yourself a little window of time between your workout and going to bed.

Your body clock can be synchronized with morning exercise in the sun, making it simpler to wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night. Additionally, doing exercise in the morning keeps you from skipping it later if life gets busy.

However, if your schedule doesn’t allow for morning exercise, obtaining some nighttime activity can be your best option. St-Onge asserts that “any physical activity is good.”

Even with an evening workout, you may reap the benefits of exercise, including better sleep, if you can allow yourself a little window of time between your workout and going to bed.

According to Michael Rogers, a professor of human performance studies and the research director for the Center for Physical Activity and Aging at Wichita State University in Kansas, “it comes down to biological rhythms; everybody’s situation is different.”

Studying exercise and sleep in the evening

Body temperature and heart rate both rise during exercise. According to Trent Yamamoto, the lab coordinator for Brett Dolezal’s UC Fit Digital Health Exercise Physiology Research Laboratory, when they are greater, people don’t sleep as well. Because of this, some individuals believe that evening activity should be restricted. But, he adds, “whether evening exercise is chosen out of preference or necessity, recent studies have shown that exercising at night doesn’t necessarily have a negative impact on sleep.” Exercise in the evening has occasionally been connected to deeper sleep at night.

Many studies demonstrate that evening exercise does not worsen people’s sleep, despite some conflicting findings, such as one from 2019 that found higher evening levels of the hormone melatonin in people who exercised in the morning compared to those who exercised in the afternoon.

According to a 2018 review of the literature on evening exercise and sleep published in the journal Sports Medicine, evening exercise was generally linked to more time spent in restorative deep sleep and rapid eye movement sleep, both of which are important for health.

The review authors note that making sure there is at least an hour between the end of vigorous exercise and sleep should help avoid these types of negative effects, but at least one study in the review linked higher bedtime body temperature with more nighttime wake-ups and less effective sleep.

Young males who performed moderate-intensity aerobic or resistance training between 8:45 and 9:30 p.m. and concluded at least 90 minutes before bedtime had no adverse impacts on sleep, according to a small 2019 Australian study. Their body temperatures were returned to normal by the time they went to sleep.

Based on data from fitness trackers, a second 2020 study of 34 active, healthy men and women (aged 18 to 45) found no changes in sleep quality between morning or afternoon and evening exercisers. Additionally, the level of exercise during workouts had no impact on how well we slept.

However, experts warn that many of these studies are small and that individual responses to exercise at different times of day may vary. St-Onge states, “We need so much more data on this.” According to her, some people may discover that evening movement has a greater negative impact on them and should therefore limit their midnight exercise more.

The best time of day to exercise?

According to numerous research, exercising at various times of the day may have varied physiological consequences.

While any exercise was linked to a lower risk for heart disease and cancer, a 2023 study that examined more than 92,000 people in the UK and was published in the journal Nature Communications found that people who exercised in the midday to afternoon or throughout the day (instead of just in the morning or evening) had the lowest risk for cardiovascular disease.

In a small group of men and women, a 2022 study published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology examined the timing of exercise and sex. According to that study, women who exercised in the morning saw the biggest drops in blood pressure and abdominal fat, while women who exercised in the evening saw the most gains in strength. In the study, the men who exercised in the evening experienced the biggest reductions in blood pressure and feeling tired.

But while studies like this one can point to some potential advantages of exercising at different times of the day, they only demonstrate transient effects in a small population.

According to Rogers, the majority of people won’t notice the differences in benefits between exercising in the morning or at night because they are so modest. For professional athletes working with trainers who can monitor their workouts and dietary intake to enhance performance, it’s a different story, he says, but for others, obtaining the health advantages of exercise at any time of day will be very beneficial.

These researchers advise evening exercisers to try to stop working out at least an hour or two before to going to bed so that the body has enough time to cool down and the heart has enough time to fully return to a resting heart rate. According to St. Onge, two to three hours would be preferable.

Certain people may find that lower-intensity evening exercise, such as yoga or walking in a dim room, is most effective because it offers certain health advantages without putting too much physiological stress on the body.

But knowing oneself is also important. “If someone has difficulty falling asleep, I wouldn’t say it’s advisable to go play basketball in a bright gym at night,” adds St-Onge. However, if you are able to exercise after supper and still go to bed and feel rested the next morning, “there is no issue,” according to her.