subject: What's Best: Morning or Evening Workouts? [print this page] What's Best: Morning or Evening Workouts?
We all know somebody that is very strongly adamant about when they work out. Either they absolutely have to get up first thing in the morning and hit the weights or the track before doing anything else, or they will only consider exercising in the evening. Nothing else will do, and they insist that their time is the only and best time to work out. Which is correct? Is there an optimal time to exercise, or are all things equal? In today's article we'll look at the pro's and the cons of exercising at different times of the day, and help you decide for yourself.
First, let's look at the pros of a morning workout. Your body has been fasting for eight hours, meaning that all the glucose has been used in your bloodstream, and you have begun to turn to stored glycogen in your liver. If you exercise without eating anything, you will burn a couple of hundred calories more, which will help your body go from glycogen use to fat burning. However, consider that there are 3,500 calories in a pound of fat. The odds that this little extra fat burning in the morning making a big difference are slim.
On the other hand, it will wake you up. If you are the kind of person that loves to be energized first thing in the morning, and can't wait to hit the shower and then have a healthy breakfast, then this is absolutely the way to go.
However, many people dread morning workouts for precisely that reason. Having fasted for eight hours they find themselves to be tired, sluggish, and low energy. They have difficulty mustering the same kind of power and enthusiasm that they can generate at night, and their bodies are cold and stiff from inactivity. For that reason, exercising in the morning can be a pain in more than one way: you could actually hurt yourself with greater ease if you fail to do a good warm up before engaging in exercise.
In the end, there are arguments to be made for either case, but it really comes down to a matter of preference. Whichever you decide to do will be best if it increases the odds of your exercising continuously. In the end, continued exercise is by far the greatest benefit of any timing, such that if you are forcing yourself to exercise when you hate it, you might quit and do yourself far more damage than good.
