A new study has found that the time of day you exercise doesn’t affect your muscle strength or your body’s ability to lower blood sugar.
This research challenges the idea that working out at certain times of the day might give you better results.
The study, published in the journal Function, is the first to directly look at how muscle performance and glucose metabolism in skeletal muscles—our body’s main muscles used for movement—change over a 24-hour period.
Skeletal muscles are responsible for producing force, which is essential for movement, and for helping to clear sugar from the bloodstream, which is important for managing blood sugar levels.
Previous research has suggested that these muscle functions might vary depending on the time of day, possibly due to our body’s internal clock, or circadian rhythm, which influences various biological processes.
To test this theory, researchers measured muscle strength, endurance, and the muscles’ ability to uptake glucose in mice at four different times throughout the day.
The results showed that neither muscle strength nor the muscles’ ability to reduce blood sugar levels were affected by the time of day. This finding applied regardless of the sex of the mice or the type of muscle being tested.
“Overall, these results suggest that time-of-day variation in exercise performance and the blood sugar-lowering benefits of exercise are not due to differences in muscle function or glucose uptake,” the research team concluded.
In simple terms, this study indicates that it doesn’t matter what time of day you choose to exercise—your muscles will perform just as well, and your body will still benefit from better blood sugar control.
This is good news for those who may have busy schedules and can only fit in exercise at certain times of the day.
This research helps clarify how our bodies respond to exercise and suggests that the most important thing is simply to stay active, regardless of when you do it.
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