The world has gotten very good at making exercise complicated.
What should you do?
How much?
How hard?
How long?
And now, apparently, we need to worry about what time it is.
Morning workouts.
Afternoon workouts.
Circadian rhythms.
Hormones.
Find your biological peak.
Researchers recently decided to test that last one in older adults, and I love the way they did it.
First, they brought people into the lab at 8 AM, noon, 4 PM and 8 PM and tested their physical performance.
That let them figure out something different for each person:
When are you at your best?
And:
When are you at your worst?
Then they randomized them.
One group trained at the time their bodies had performed best.
Another group trained at their worst time.
That’s the part I love.
If timing really matters, don’t compare some arbitrary morning group with an evening group. Find out when Dave performs best, then make poor Dave exercise at exactly the wrong time.
For 12 weeks, participants did two supervised whole-body resistance-training sessions and one moderate cycling session each week.
So what happened?
Both training groups got stronger.
Both gained muscle.
But training at someone’s biologically best time provided no meaningful advantage over making them train at their worst time.
Basically, their muscles didn’t seem to give a damn what the clock said.
Now, this doesn’t settle every question about exercise timing. The study wasn’t testing whether late exercise affects your sleep, whether timing changes blood sugar, or when an athlete might perform best. And the participants were around 67 years old on average…not extremely old or frail.
It answered a much narrower question.
Do older adults need to find their magical time of day to get stronger and build muscle?
This study gives us no reason to think they do.
I find that wonderfully reassuring.
Because there are already enough reasons not to exercise.
If mornings work for you, exercise in the morning.
If four o’clock works, exercise at four.
If 7:30 tonight is when you’ve finally got an hour, apparently that’s fine too.
Your biceps don’t own a watch.