In my 11+ years as a fitness coach, I have trained individuals at all times of the day, but I never came across sound research determining if there was a detriment to sleep by training too late in the day (versus training too early). In a recent study publish by Concordia University, postdoc fellow Emmanuel Frimpong reports, “Overall, our analysis showed that when exercise ended two hours before bedtime, there were sleep benefits, including the promotion of sleep onset and increased sleep duration.” Frimpong goes onto say, ”On the other hand, when exercise ended less than two hours before bedtime, sleep was negatively impacted. It took longer for participants to fall asleep and sleep duration decreased.”
MY TAKE: I don’t think there is a right or wrong time to train, but as CMO of Inside Tracker Dr. Gil Blander said in our recent podcast, “The problem with the fitness community is they sacrifice their sleep for exercise.” As long as your sleep is not effected by the time you train, I think you are good to go. But if you are forced to wake up early to workout thus reducing the duration of quality sleep, or you are working out so late in the day that you are negatively impacted your ability to get to sleep, there is room for improvement. Personally, I find the most successful clients that I train workout about 30 minutes after waking from 7-9 hours of sleep. For these clients, that are able to:
Get quality sleep
Wake up and become oriented and get some fluids or stimulants into their body
They don’t allow other activities to get in the way of their workout
They aren’t working out so late that it becomes challenging to get to sleep
If you are having a hard time finding the “right time” to workout, I can help. One of the benefits of working together is that I can help identify areas of your life that are getting in the way of you being your best self and work toward creating real change through action steps. Click the link below to get started today!