Best Time for Workout - Morning or Night

Best Time for Workout

- Factors That Affect Workout Performance

- Peak Performance Time Based on Individual Factors

- More Benefits of Morning Workouts over Evening Workouts

- Tips for Better Performance in Morning Workouts

Preface

Many people prefer working out the first thing in the morning, while others would rather do it in the evening.

Exercise’s benefits are countless. Regular exercise reduces your risk of many deadly medical conditions, especially heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and strokes. Exercise is important for your mental well-being, too.

In today’s busy life, many people find it hard to accommodate 1 full hour of exercise in their daily routine.

On the other side, among people who do exercise regularly, there are many who work out at a very inappropriate time, e.g., at the end of work when there are often distractions due to personal or familial reasons leading to frequently missing the workout sessions.

The consequence is obvious: such people eventually give up thanks to faded motivation.

If you are thinking of changing your time of workout or changing your lifestyle to give some time to your health, I have some guidelines for you to consider, which are backed by scientific research and have revolutionized the lives of many people, including me.

There are four times of the day, and you can only choose one of these times: morning, noon, late afternoon-early evening, night (before bedtime). Experts recommend exercising at the same time on every day you exercise, as irregular timing can adversely affect your body’s ability to recover and is not viable if you are serious about your ambitions.

Factors That Affect Workout Performance

When you exercise, many organs and hormones in your body work together to perform any movement, and the efficiency of all these organs and hormones directly influence your performance in the exercise as well as determine how much you can benefit from the exercise health-wise.

You need energy, flexibility in your joints and muscles, focus, alertness, high testosterone, a healthy cardiovascular system, a fully functional respiratory system, and enough sleep in the previous night for a perfect workout.

If any of these is missing, you are not going to perform very well and are at a high risk of workout-related injuries.

Peak Performance Time Based on Individual Factors

Unfortunately, the optimum performance time is different based on different factors that play an important role in your workouts.

Peak Performance Time Based on Individual Factors

- Testosterone

- Mental Focus & Alertness

- Flexibility

- Energy

- Lungs

- Sleep

Testosterone

Testosterone is vital for muscle repair and strength. A high level of testosterone will speed up the process of muscle recovery even during the workout, heightening your performance and enabling you to lift heavy and build more muscle.

Testosterone boosts motivation, and makes you take risks and utilize all your natural abilities to their fullest potential to reach your targets, fearlessly. And you must have such bold behavior to outperform others in the competitive world.

The production of this key substance in the body peaks in the morning just after waking up.

Mental Focus & Alertness

You must be very focused during your workout. You must be involved in your repetitions, both physically and mentally. If your mind is fully aware of what’s you are doing, you will be able to perform each move properly and get the most out of your physical struggle.

During a workout, you engage specific muscles depending on the need, e.g., you should focus on engaging your lower-body muscles, i.e., glutes, quads, and hamstrings, and not your back muscles in squats and deadlifts.

If you don’t pay attention, you are very likely to use your lower back to lift the weight off the floor in the deadlift and to stand up in the squat, especially with a heavy barbell, which can result in lower back injuries giving you a hard time.

Therefore, before initiating an exercise, make sure that your brain is free from all thoughts, and you are fully concentrated in your activity.

Your mind is most attentive in the morning.

You should also be aware of your surroundings, especially if you are working out at the gym.

At the gym, you are surrounded by other members working out with you. A minor mistake, especially if the heavy weights are not handled rightly, can be dangerous not just for you but for others as well. A faulty gym equipment, if not identified at the right time, can lead to serious consequences for you.

If your alertness is up to the mark, you can identify even the slightest unusual thing.

Your alertness peaks twice in a day: once in the morning and once in the evening.

Alertness is very poor in the afternoon. That’s why most traffic accidents occur, according to research, in the afternoon.

Flexibility

While you are sleeping, your body is mostly at rest, which means little heat generation in the body. Furthermore, as the environment is coolest at night and in the early morning, there is more heat loss from your body to the environment. As a result, your body temperature is low in the morning hours.

Low temperatures mean less warmth in your body and less flexibility in your muscles.

Working out cold and stiff muscles is not recommended, as your muscles’ mobility is very poor in this situation leading to poor performance, inability to lift heavy, more time in warming-up, and an increased risk of workout injuries.

Your body temperature rises as you get active and consume your food and the environment gets warmer with sunshine.

Generally, the body temperature peaks in the late afternoon – early evening. Hence, early-evening workouts are more beneficial if your goal is more strength and muscle.

Energy

You can’t perform even the easiest exercise without energy, and the only source of energy for your body is the food you consume.

The food you consume provides calories, which are stored by the body as glycogen, fat, and muscle. Normally, the body prefers glycogen, and then fat.

The glycogen reserves in your body are very low in the morning because you haven’t eaten anything for many hours. Therefore, if your primary goal is fat loss but not more muscle, working out in the morning before breakfast is your best option, because this will force the body to use already-stored fat as energy.

But if your primary goal is developing more strength and building more muscle, the morning is not a time any fitness expert is going to recommend. That’s because for such intense workouts, there must be some readily available glycogen in your body to meet the very high energy demand of the body’s cells in a short burst, which can’t be fulfilled only with the fat.

The best time for such intense workouts is after you have eaten at least one large meal or two medium meals, but give 2-3 hours following a meal to your digestive system to perfectly digest the food and make it available to the body before starting your workout. For an average working person, this time is the mid-afternoon or night (a few hours after the dinner).

Lungs

Your heart rate naturally increases during an exercise to increase the supply of oxygen to the muscles. And all that oxygen needs to be sucked from outside air, which is done by the lungs.

Although normal lungs have no optimum-function time, research has shown slightly better performance in the late afternoon than other times.

Sleep

Getting enough sleep every night is one of the fundamental requirements for high workout performance. Much of your muscle recovery occurs while you are sleeping.

During an exercise, the fibers of the targeted muscle are damaged with tears at the micro level. These tears are repaired by the body such that the repaired muscles are bigger and stronger than their previous state allowing you to lift heavier or perform more repetitions with the same weight next time.

This is a completely natural process. As this process predominately occurs when your body is at rest, make sure to sleep for about 8 hours every night to benefit from your previous workout as much as possible.

In addition to that, getting enough sleep at night keeps your metabolism elevated and your level of concentration and alertness high throughout the daytime, which have a positive effect on the quality of your workouts.

If you want to learn how to get good sleep at night, there is my detailed article on this topic.

One of my suggestions is to avoid intense exercises at night, at least 4 hours before your bedtime.

The issue with nighttime workouts is that it might interfere with your circadian rhythm. Heavy workouts increase metabolism and energize your brain much like strong tea/coffee, which can cause trouble falling asleep.

Additionally, as a high-protein meal is consumed after an intense exercise session, the resulting heat produced in the body, due to the thermic effect of food, can lead to night sweats and midnight awakenings, which can negatively affect your sleep satisfaction.

Eating a large dinner close to bedtime can also upset your stomach, which is also very tired like you at that time.

A Comparison

You see that we have pros and cons of all 4 times of the day for workouts. I have summarized this entire discussion in one table below.

Critical Factor	Morning	Evening
Testosterone	Best
Focus	Best
Alertness	Best	Best
Body Temperature		Best
Energy		Best
Lung Function		Best (slightly)
Sleep Quality	Best

In making the right decision, you are left with no option but to make some compromises.

Testosterone generation and focus are optimum in the morning, but your body is warmer with more energy in the evening. Alertness is fine in both times. For a healthy person, the lung performance doesn’t vary much between them. The sleep factor favors morning; thus, morning is the clear winner, as it is supported by four factors instead of three for evening.

Conclusion

Hence, we can say that the best time of the day for all types of workouts is the morning time.

More Benefits of Morning Workouts over Evening Workouts

Personal Factors

Even when personal factors are considered, evening is not a good option. Evening is generally a busy time for an average working person or a student.

You have worked for about 7-8 hours, and you are already very tired. Especially in big cities, at least one hour gets wasted in traffic jams. Then you have other important tasks, like shopping for groceries and a medical checkup for your kid, etc. If you are a student, you need some time for homework & assignments and preparation for tests.

After all this, you want to spend some moments with your family. You are also curious about what’s trending on Twitter. Meanwhile, sleep comes. And to get enough sleep, you should be in your bed by 11 p.m. So, you don’t have much time for anything else.

Gym Factors

There is another advantage of morning workouts for those who work out at the gym.

As gyms are much less crowded in the morning, you get as much time as you want at any gym machine.

In the evening, there are often queues at commonly used machines and even in locker rooms.

Once working out in the morning becomes your routine, you will never switch to evening.

Tips for Better Performance in Morning Workouts

If you want to further elevate your performance in the morning, I have some suggestions for you, which work by minimizing the impact of the cons of morning workouts (i.e., low food energy and body temperature, both of which are maximum in the evening).

You can follow these steps as your morning routine:

Wake up early

Wake up early, at 5. First few days can be a bit hard, then you will get used to it. To get full sleep, you must be in your bed by 9 p.m.

Eat a high-carb breakfast

Have a moderate breakfast high in carbs.

Wait for an hour

Then give at least 1 hour to your body to process that food. During this one hour, do some low-intensity cardio. For example, go for a morning walk. If you are a gym member and the gym is not that far, go to the gym walking. Or use the treadmill at a slow pace if the weather is bad. Walking will not just speed up the digestion process but will also warm up your body a little bit.

Warm up

Before starting any exercise, do a warm-up exercise for that workout.

The best warm-up for any exercise is the same exercise performed with a light weight and more repetitions. For example, suppose it’s bench press. Your intended weight for the first proper set is 75% of your 1 rep max. So, the best warm-up in this scenario is the same bench press but with no more than 25% of your 1 rep max, 12+ repetitions, and proper form.

Warmup is important, especially in the morning, to prepare your body for an intense workout by improving the function and mobility of your joints and muscles. This way you can significantly reduce your risk of many common workout injuries.

Post-Workout

After completing your workout, have a shower, followed by a large protein-rich meal.

Eventually, you will be more active and confident at the workplace, and there will be abundant free time for you in the evening.