Writing on the New York Times website, Anahad O’Connor questions “The Claim: Morning is the Best Time to Exercise.”
Of course, exercising no matter what time of day is obviously better than no exercise at all, but what is your own personal experience?
We used to work all day, then try to fit in an exercise session in the evening, though most of the time we found some excuse not to. Now that we’re more in control of our work schedule, we tend to put in 4?5 hours of project work, or meeting time in the morning, then have lunch, and head to the sports club or, weather permitting, out on our bicycle or foot bike.
It’s almost like magic, but after a serious workout including at least 45 minutes of aerobics and sets of weight training followed by a shower we feel completely refreshed and ready to tackle another 4?5 hours of work.
We’re also trying to integrate exercise into our daily life style. Instead of taking the bus or train for short trips (we don’t own or need a car), we’ll use our bicycle. Climbing a few flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator helps improve our health, and saves electricity.
We also have a few strategies to deal with the potential boredom that turns people off on exercising. Rather than fill our iPod with music, we load it up with podcasts to listen to while exercising. It’s like training our brain while we train our body. Another good strategy is to change the route we use when walking or cycling. There are probably a dozen ways to make it from the train station to our house, so we constantly switch the route we follow. It provides variety, keeps us in touch with what’s going on in our neighborhood, and gives us the opportunity to run into neighbors and friends that we wouldn’t normally see.
Guess what we’re trying to say is that the best time of day for exercise is all day. . . .
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