Maximum Benefits of Exercise Timing May be Gender-Specific

Listen to this News

The effectiveness of exercise during any time of day depends on the type of exercise and training objectives and differs between women and men. But even when time of day isn't taken into account, the new multimodal weekly exercise program improves health and performance for both sexes.

When Should I Fit Exercise Within My Daily Schedule?

Over the past decade, researchers have found that much more hangs on this question than these constraints. That's because recent findings suggest that the effectiveness of exercise depends on the time of day (Exercise Time Of Day, ETOD).

Now a randomized controlled trial not only confirms convincingly that ETOD affects the effectiveness of exercise but also shows that these effects differ between types of exercise, and between women and men. The results were published in Frontiers in Physiology.

‘Females reduced their total body fat, abdominal and hip fat, and blood pressure more by exercising in the morning but men had more benefits while exercising in evening’

Principal investigator Dr. Paul J Arciero, a professor at the Health and Human Physiological Sciences Department of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, USA, said: "Here we show for the first time that for women, exercise during the morning reduces belly fat and blood pressure, whereas evening exercise in women increases upper body muscular strength, power, and endurance, and improves overall mood and nutritional satiety".

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.

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 60 min 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 1.8 g 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, 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. All 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