This is the most popular time of day to work out

After a year of working out at any time and almost anywhere that wasn’t a gym, Americans are back to hitting fitness centers and classes and they are all doing it at the same time. According to figures collected from ClassPass’ database of over 40,000 gyms, the most popular time to work out is now 5:30 pm.

Working out in the pandemic-era

Working out using a home gym, YouTube videos or personal exercise equipment has been a cornerstone of many remote worker’s COVID experiences. The benefits speak for themselves: the study mentions that 96% of professionals report feeling much more “motivated” and “less stressed” after their daily in-home workouts, and another 89% say that when they exercise during the workday, they feel more “productive” afterward.

Interestingly, COVID has seen the rise of home workouts in populations that hadn’t exercised much before. Twenty-five percent of working professionals say that they were working out more during COVID than before, and four out of five say that working out from home has been a staple of their work-from-home routines.

The new time to get movin’

However, now that pandemic restrictions are lifting and people are heading back to the gym, the post-COVID workout world has begun to look a bit different. During the pandemic, for “the first time ever,” as ClassPass reports, the most popular time to work out was lunchtime, around 12 PM.

This time of day saw a 67% surge in workouts, most common in cities like Dallas, New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Internationally, this trend holds up as well. London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Manchester all saw an increase in lunchtime workouts.

It’s no mystery as to why this could be. When working out from home, one can dodge from their Peloton to the shower (or not) and back to their home office relatively quickly. In fact, one out of five people has been using their lessened commute time to squeeze in a workout. But now that in-person fitness classes are being booked and individuals must account for the time it takes to get to the gym, the most prevalent time to work out has begun to change.

The newest and most popular time to work out in 2021 is 5:30 PM, where classes like strength training, yoga, and cycling have come back into style. While lunchtime workouts are still common, as 12 PM is the second-most-popular time to book a fitness class, it seems that working out at the end of the day has become trendier than working out in the middle of the day.

Why the time change?

As to why this is, there are a few reasons. It’s likely that people are seeking to have more separation between work and playtime, and they’re looking for a more detached way to destress after a long day of emails and Zoom meetings. The ritual of going to a place that’s not your own home and participating in an activity surrounded by strangers can be invigorating, exhilarating, and it can make you forget about all the trials and tribulations of the workday.

Another reason could be that people are heading back into the office, and many offices don’t have gyms attached to or adjacent to them. Working out in the middle of the day is a bit more of a necessary evil, something that you feel like you can “get away with” as a remote worker.

But with hours of your day now going back to commuting, having lunch meetings with coworkers, or showering after the gym, the end of the day might be the only time you have left to work out.