Wee-hour WORKOUTS

Think about a visit to the gym and you probably imagine enduring long wait times for the treadmill, the hustle and bustle of exercisers hopping from one machine to another and the certain social buzz that comes with working out in a public place.Not Graham Taylor.

Often when the Winnipegger is at his gym -- Goodlife Fitness in Linden Woods --things are eerily quiet.

That's because it's around midnight. Occasionally it's 2 a.m.

At those off-kilter hours, Taylor shares the facility with less than a handful of exercisers.

He loves the serenity of working out so late.

"There are always a few people around. It kind of feels like it's empty time," says Taylor. "You don't have to be anywhere that you're watching the clock and you can just work out at your own pace."

Welcome to the new wave of fitness to hit Winnipeg: 24-hour gyms that offer round-the-clock service. Their target users: People who, for whatever reason, prefer to work out in wee hours of the night.

It's a growing phenomenon in North America; there are hundreds of 24-hour gyms across the continent.

Winnipeg is catching on to the trend. At least four Winnipeg gyms -- with more to come -- offer a 24-hour option.

Shapes on Pembina has offered a 24-hour option for years. Snap Fitness, GoodLife Fitness and Anytime Fitness are the latest to join the ranks.

Anytime Fitness -- says the owner of Winnipeg's first location, Lisa Salyer -- is North America's fastest growing co-ed 24-hour fitness chain.

The North Dakota native plans to open five more locations throughout Manitoba.

Taylor -- who owns a Booster Juice location on Taylor Avenue not far from GoodLife Fitness -- likes to head over to the gym after he closes up shop. He hits the weights and cardio machines until he has to pick up his fiancée, a nurse at St. Boniface General Hospital.

Other times, Taylor works out at 2 a.m. just to "burn the midnight oil" when his brain is brimming with activity after a busy day.

"One would say that it's cutting into your sleep time. But if you're not worried about sleep, then it feels like time has slowed down a bit finally -- so it's a little bit more relaxing," says Taylor.

Of the three GoodLife gyms in Winnipeg, the Linden Woods location -- open since March-- is the only one that offers 24-hour service.

Karen Goodale, manager of that location, says its 24-hour option attracts a lot of new members, though only about a quarter of new members actually use it.

That equates to about 30 people a night--mostly shift workers-- who choose to work out during off-hours.

"Initially, they are impressed, says Goodale. "I guess it's good to know just in case."

For four years, David Menzies Irwin-- a forklift operator at Sysco and a certified athletic therapist--exercised at odd hours at Shapes on Pembina.

Working out at two in the morning was something Menzies Irwin looked forward to.

"There was no one in there. You had the whole place to yourself," he says. "You were able to get your workout done quick and wouldn't have to worry about waiting on people for machines."

Another benefit of overnight exercise: There's no reason to be self-conscious.

"There were guys that I worked out with who didn't want to go to the gym at 9 in the morning because they didn't want to be seen by a lot of people," says Menzies Irwin.

"They could go there and get healthy, get fit and not have to worry about people looking at them."

The Linden Woods resident says he would have worked out more had his gym been open around the clock during the weekends.

As for working out interfering with his sleep, he says he had no problem hitting the sheets once he got home after his hour-long workout.

World-renowned sleep expert Dr. Meir Kryger questions the safety of working out at night.

"I would certainly never in a million years do it, and neither would most people," says Kryger, director of research education at Gaylord Sleep Medicine in Wallingford, Conn.

Kryger says the body naturally functions on circadian rhythms with a soup of powerful hormones released during the night.

"There are too many metabolic processes that can't be controlled that assume that when it's night, you're sleeping," says Kryger, noting the growing evidence suggesting that not sleeping at the right times can lead to weight gain.

Although exercising could combat this phenomenon, Kryger says there are too many other factors at work that may actually cause an overnight exerciser to get fat.

"It's going to mess up the body's 24-hour control of many functions," says Kryger, noting that he has hundreds of patients who are overweight shift workers.

A shift-working patient he saw last week is an "exercise fanatic" who works out for hours in the middle of the night and is gaining weight.

"He gets up at 3 or 4 in the morning, runs to the gym, exercises like a maniac and the rest of the day is eating a lot.

"Is the problem that his metabolism and his appetite control system is screwed up by his lack of sleep or is there something else going on?" asks Kryger, who encourages his patients to find time to exercise during daytime hours.

Winnipeg personal trainer Barb Herda and owner of CORE Training and Therapy, agrees that staying up late can do a number on metabolism.

Although she prefers that her clients work out during the day, she says that people who have no choice should go ahead and hit the gym in the middle of the night.

"They are better to exercise than to not do it at all," says Herda, a longtime fitness advocate who founded the Manitoba Exercise Professionals Association. "The fact that they are already on a shift cycle is already messing up their system. Something like the exercise can at least maybe get some balance back into the body."

Have an interesting story idea you'd like Shamona to write about? Contact her at shamona.harnett@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 15, 2008 D1