Master The Nighttime Workout

Shift your exercise routine to sundown and you’ll beat the heat plus boost your fat burn and stamina. We’ve got all the safe-sweat tips and cool-gear picks for your new power hour.

- Sara Angle

Bright lights, big humidity? You could retreat to a climate-controlled gym for your workouts, but then you would miss out on some great outdoor escapes. Instead, embrace the after-hours run or bike ride and you’ll not only keep cool but also possibly amp up your results. When people exercise in the evening, they are able to go 20 per cent longer than in the morning, research in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism found. Your body has a greater ability to produce energy in the evening, thanks to a faster oxygen uptake that spares your body’s anaerobic reserves a bit longer, and your anaerobic capacity (how much energy you can produce without using oxygen) is at its peak at this time, explains David Hill, the author of the study.

Nighttime exercisers also had larger increases in levels of cortisol and thyrotropin – two hormones essential for energy metabolism – than people who exercised at any other time of the day, according to a University of Chicago study. When cortisol is running high all day because of stress, it can increase abdominal fat storage. But during exercise, cortisol does a 180, becoming a fat-burning hormone as it breaks down carbs more efficiently, says Michele Olson,an exercise physiologist at Auburn University in the US. In other words, it turbocharges your calorie burn.

Another study, in The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, compared women who walked for exercise in the morning with those who did so in the evening, and found that even though both groups had roughly the same daily caloric intake, the women who walked later in the day burned more fat overall. Why?