Late night training

24 hours gyms have become the norm recently and burning the midnight gym oil is a great way to beat that evening rush. But messing with our sleeping patterns is a certain risk and it has been suggested that we might be doing more harm than good. The question is whether all of this is actually costing us in the gym. 

Maybe it’s just because I live in a city, but there are so many gyms now that offer their services all day, everyday. And anyone who has been to the gym after 5pm can sympathise with just how busy it gets. In the end you do’t get to go on everything you needed to and you spend far less time training than you should.

For busy working adults though, this is the only time that they have to get their training in. If you’re up at 7am everyday to get the kids ready for school and then you’re in the office until 5pm then that doesn’t leave a lot of time in the middle to get your workout done. If you’re lucky you might get the weekend off but lots of people aren’t satisfied with just training twice in the week.

So you can see why training at 3am has become more and more popular and why so many people are choosing to follow suit. One thing that we do have a better understanding of now though is how important a good sleeping pattern can be if you want to be healthy. So much so that people have strict internal body clocks that they just couldn’t imagine tampering with. But if you do choose to go down this route, then what are the risks?

The relationship between our hormones and our mood is famously understood by most people now, at least to a certain degree. And we also know that our hormones have a direct relation to our sleeping pattern as well. If you alter a sleep pattern that your body has had years of getting used to then there are signs that it could increase the hormones that we associate with stress and this can have numerous knock-on effects relating to our immediate health. But of course, if you are implementing a new sleeping pattern then this should only occur for a short period of time as your body gets used to the new times.

It isn’t very technical to talk about things like being in night mode but I think it might be the easiest way to make this next point. Quite obviously our bodies are in very different states when we are asleep and when we are awake and for most people we associate the day with being awake and night time with being asleep. So if you decide to get up in the middle of the night and try to work out, despite your best intentions, it’s possible that your body might not be quite as enthusiastic as you are.

The solution to that would obviously be to just stay awake, right? Well ideally yes, but people who are working throughout the day can’t be expected to be up all night too. So what’s the answer? Well look, the important thing is that you find time to exercise. And for everyone that will be a unique challenge that completely depends on your circumstances. Some people have loads of free time and others don’t. As long as you are leaving appropriate time for all the other things that you need to do then there is nothing wrong with choosing the middle of the night as your dedicated workout time.