Comments on: Exercising at night, or not making the perfect the enemy of the good

By: Jennie

Jennie — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 18:12:43 +0000

I try to batch my exercise into when my kids are at activity. My children are 13, 10, and 8. We spend a lot of time at ball fields (4x a week) While they are practicing, I walk with ankle weights, climb stairs, and do kickbacks. When my children are at scout meetings (3x a week), I have a set of hand weights in the car and do a 20 minute hand weight routine. The children aren’t missing any mommy time because they are engaged and I get to fit a little exercise in!

By: xykademiqz

xykademiqz — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 01:57:22 +0000

I am very much a morning person, which is exactly why I don’t like to exercise in the morning. Instead, I focus on getting some work done. I already have to dilute the morning hours with prepping kids for school and self for work and chauffeuring, I don’t want to waste more of these good, high-energy hours on exercise, showering etc and thus further postpone peak work hours (did it for a while, hated it). Whenever I tried to work out super early, the kids would also wake up and then my husband would have to do the morning, which he hates as he is very much not a morning person and sucks at life before 1 pm. So, most definitely not the morning for me.

Instead, I now do kickboxing 3x a week, 4:30-5:15, which is early enough to still manage to pick up the youngest two from daycare by 5:45, and it’s late enough that I don’t have to leave work too early (I also work some in the evenings and on weekends).

By: Marcia at Organising Queen

Marcia at Organising Queen — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 18:16:06 +0000

I’m not a morning person at all. I know you said in a recent post that one can train oneself. I don’t buy that at all; I read in Better than Before that research shows morning people don’t become night owls and night owls don’t become morning people.

So I exercise after work at 6.30 or 7. If I didn’t exercise then, I’d never exercise. It helps me to get some stress relief after work and I actually feel awake enough to enjoy it.

I tried a few sessions with a personal trainer in the morning but it was more torturous than after work simply because I’m not awake yet, so now I’m “Being Marcia” 🙂

By: ARC

ARC — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 16:30:07 +0000

In reply to SHU. OMG, this totally explains why my husband is so sleepy during allergy season. We kept thinking it couldn't be the Zyrtec since the package (and his doc) says it's non-drowsy...

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:17:35 +0000

After having baby #2 and returning to work (BigLaw) I started doing Insanity at night and got into fantastic shape. That said, it meant I wasn’t getting to bed until midnight, didn’t have time with my husband, and needed to wash/blowdry hair on a daily basis. Once work travel kicked in, the habit stopped. It was nice while it lasted, but the evening sacrifices were a bit too much.

By: CNM

CNM — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 21:05:59 +0000

In reply to Alex. Ha! Good point. I figure that if toddler is doing fine, I'm not going to worry about the time dinner is served. If he is truly starving, there are snacks (a very un-French thing!) at the daycare to tide him over.

By: M

Thu, 18 Feb 2016 15:13:08 +0000

I hate working out in the morning. I have done it for brief periods in my life. First – I feel like I have to go to bed WAY too early in order to get enough sleep before waking up at 5 AM. This results in me typically not getting quite enough sleep (even if I go to bed at a reasonable hour like 10:30 – that’s only 6.5 h). Second – the workouts I do are very demanding on my body, and I just feel so cold that early in the morning – my muscles are cold, my joints are stiff… so the workout ends up being less pleasant and effective. Third – even if I do get enough sleep, instead of feeling “energized” after working out, I often end up crashing later in the morning. I don’t think these arguments would necessarily apply to say, a morning job, but they do to weight/circuit training.

My preference now is to workout after work, but before dinner. This way it still happens before I get home and get into “the day is over” mode, but then when I’m done all I have to do is go home, eat dinner, and put on PJs. If I still have energy, I can get some work done after the kids are in bed.

If needed, I would definitely work out later at night (7-8 PM). Not as ideal as 5-6 PM, but way better than the morning.

By: Morana

Morana — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 23:01:25 +0000

I recently started exercising more at night as part of my personal yoga challenge of taking a yoga class every day in January. I was hesitant about late night classes (7:30 PM, and my bedtime is 9:00 PM), but I found that once I dragged myself to class it was relaxing and because yoga class includes a wind down at the end I’d come home ready for shower and bed. I’ve been sleeping much better, I have more energy in the morning and start on work early, and watch less TV. It’s been great and I’m keeping it up 3-4 nights a week. I’m unable to do good thinking work at night anyway, so I might as well be exercising.

By: Khar

Khar — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 22:39:58 +0000

I don’t have kids, so my routine is different and I have less responsibilities but I’ve been doing a 7:30pm bar class two weekday evenings per week and one on the weekends late morning for a few months now and it works for me. I eat dinner after (studio is a 3 minute walk from home and my husband makes dinner). I don’t think I could do morning exercise. I would be worried about passing out without a decent breakfast and I hate eating right when I wake up.

By: lauravanderkam

lauravanderkam — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 14:56:48 +0000

In reply to gwinne. @gwinne- I like doing it mid-day too during what would be a natural break. I think that will make more sense when the weather gets nicer and I want to be outside during the day!