The Best Time of Day to Workout

You just finished your blog post?

I just finished my workout. Haha.

Nice post, I usually find that I can workout at my utmost intensity in the evening, I too suck at the mornings, as im up till about 3am.

While I agree that whatever time of the day you feel your mind above all, is ready to give the focus necessary to lift the heaviest weights at the intensity you need to lift them for the results you want to achieve, I think you have to take into account one simple question: How much food can I eat before that 8-9 hour starvation period known as sleep? This question becomes even more important when you think about how much your muscles need the amino acids and the insulin response in order to begin repairing themselves, and how increased muscle insulin sensitivity plays such an important role in making sure that happens. Also, it’s important to remember that sensitivity doesn’t last forever…pretty much about a day’s worth of time. If you’re going to work out at night, fine. Just make sure you stay up long enough to get in your daily amount of protein before you starve yourself for 8 hours!

I start my workouts at 6.50 am. Because that’s the only time my wife is asleep so she won’t notice me “having fun” and find some work for me to do. Alternatively, she’ll be convinced that I’m using too much effort and I’ll hurt myself.

Of course, this assumes she hasn’t woken me up at 2 am to ask me to proof read a business letter or something. In which case it takes me 30 minutes to wake up to the proof-reading level, and so I’ll miss an hours sleep and skip training that day. But it only happens once or twice a week.

I couldn’t agree more! I am defenitly not a morning person. Even though I get up at 5.30 for work, I suck at working out so early. My best time for that is in the afternoon and early in the evening. At that time I feel much better and stronger, plus the results are much better! I also tested this morning workout, and discovered that it drains all of my energy for the day, and the regeneration is much slower! Maybe a quick jog in the woods for oxygen and a better apetite…

don’t stop with this great post’s ;) – they rock
Frenk

I work out in the afternoon because I have asthma and science says the best time for people whose air may be limited is between 3 pm and 5pm every day. This is not the best time for someone who is confined to an office or meetings every afternoon, but it helped me understand why I had such a hard time doing early morning workouts. Since I was laid off from my job and have been free lancing, I try to work out every week day around 3 pm and it is really true that I breathe better at this time of day than earlier. (I don’t like getting going in the morning any more than you do, but did it for many years anyway…)

Joel,
You are right – the best time to workout is when you feel it’s best.
But I do feel sorry for you night owls as you are missing the best time of day.
I usally wake up before five and am out on the road jogging or cycling or doing resistance training (on alternate days) by 5-45.
It’s great watching the velvet black sky turn tio grey and silver and dawn turn to sunrisem as I exercise.
Besides here in Borneo, right on the Equator, early morning is the coolest time of day.
By the time I drive to work at 8am I can feel my body bizzing from the workout, which sets me up for the day.
By the way, I am 70.
Rock on
Bernard

I suppose NEVER is not the answer you are looking for?

Definitely around 5-7 pm, when the air has cooled a bit, but its not too cold. In the winter I like to work out in the afternoons around 3pm. It takes me about half an hour to fully realise I’m awake in the morning, and by then I have to eat breakfeast and finish getting ready for work. So there.

I love it in the morning. I’m up at 4:30 am. After a shake and the strongest cup of coffee on mother earth I hit the gym at 5:00 am. My workouts are focused, it’s cooler in the morning, my eating isn’t messed up and I don’t have a day’s worth of crap hanging over my head. Most of all the wannabe trainers are nowhere in sight. Switching from evenings to mornings was the best thing I ever did. I’m injury free, stronger, more muscular and leaner then ever before. The weird thing is I can only get better…

At 7:30 – 8:00 PM. Is when I came back from my work. Not a lot of energy, but I have no election.

Steve Maxwell has pointed out it is very important to do a full warm up for morning work because the spine is extended from lying down sleeping. This makes it far easier to displace vertebrae or suffer other back problems.

Another night owl! I also am at my most productive between 4pm and 3am. I work out at 9 pm, which energizes me further for late night productivity. I’m also a light sleeper, so when I hear the newspaper being delivered at 6 am, I get up and read it for half an hour (with a yogurt), and then resume sleep until 9:30 am. However, I am totally foggy, and dragged out for that first hour upon awakening. Been like this for most of my adult life, so I just accept this as my rhythm, and make the most of it. Complicates things, though when my Mother visits, as she’s a “morning person”! You won’t get any profound conversation out of me in the morning.

Joel
Somewhere in Russia there was a study that showed that people working out at 10pm had better results then 10am. Something about better quality rest close to the training time. However

as you pointed out you might get a crappy workout at that time. Probably the best answer is whenever you feel like you should. Arnold worked out first thing in the morning and he got great results…

to each his own

Eric Moss RKC

My best time is: whenever I have the time and energy. On some weeks I’m heavily loaded with work and my workout timings can be all over the place. For instance, I could be working out on Monday morning, Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon. Personally I like working in the morning but work tends to get in the way.

I would have to total agree with you… Train when you are going to get the maximum out of your work out!

I would only add 2 other things to that;

1. Try to train at the same time every day
2. Train with a buddy so that even on a bad day you have a good day

Up 3 and 3:30 a.m. everyday even weekends, after a snack I’m in my weight room between 4 and 4:30 a.m. if it’s a workout day.

After work is the best time for me…makes me feel better after sitting on my ass all day at my desk :-). I occasionally work out in the morning on a Saturday which I seem to be a bit better at but generally I get up with the minimum amount of time I need to get ready for work and pretty much growl at people until I get coffeee….not an ideal time to hit the gym…

I used to work out first thing in the morning and got good results. I recently switched to about 4pm after reading something about the benefit of training at that time. Having given it a go, I have switched back and come to the conclusion, that for people in the real world, i.e those with jobs and families who can’t wake up at 10am, the morning is probably universally the best time, irrespective of whether you are a morning person.

Why?
- you get your work-out out of the way and can focus on the rest of your life
- A good work-out will provide a real metabolic stimulus for the rest of the day that will leave you fresh and energised for the day
- Working out during the working day interrupts your professional life and in the evening your family life
- You get a sense of achievement from having already done your work-out
- removes the stress that you put yourself under to fit your workout in when in the middle of your day
- It is the least interrupted time of day, and thus you are most likely to actually do your work-out – in fact, I guarantee you will miss fewer work-outs. After all who will stop you going to the gym at 6 or 7am? at 3pm or 4pm however, you might find your boss glaring at you as you stride out of the office with your gym bag! At 6 or 7 pm you might want to go home to see your wife and kids. At 10pm there are better forms of exercise you and your partner could be benefitting from!
- Even if you are a total night owl like myself, you can soon condition yourself to be a morning person and be awake and put full intensity into your work-outs.
- The vast majority of highly successful people in all areas are uop and about in the am.

If you can’t do it right off the bat, try this method: get up 10mins earlier every day for about a week. The extra hour you gain is sufficient to cover your work-out from all subsequent weeks onwards.

Also, if you are over about 25, make sure you do not sleep more than 7 hours – you really don’t need it (won’t help with anything, including muscle building). Again, you may need to phase down to 7 or less over a period of a week or two. Frankly if you’re over 30 and sleeping more than 6 hours a day, you need to rethink your priorities

May be everybody thinks I am crazy as I workout daily at around 1 in the afternoons when everybody is having their lunch.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for your today article. Finally, someone to understand me. I hate wake up in the morning, I hate go to my work in the morning, but what can I do? I think that probably we must vote for a law in order to work after noon. Thank you for make me feel as a human and not like a strange person and because of you I don’t feel guilty anymore about my biological clock.

Best regads

Clearly this is an individual thing – we all know that some people are better at mornings than others. Everyone has different “productive” times during the day, and as you point out Joel, the best time to work out is when you have the most productivity and can best focus on the task at hand.

Personally, I like mornings – i.e. 6:00am. But sometimes I have to change it up due to scheduling issues…but I always get it done before 1:00pm – after that I start to peter out…maybe it’s job-stress, I don’t know. But I have learned to figure out what works best for me and work with it. In your case Joel, perhaps you lose 1% of fat loss by not working out in the morning, but compare that to only attaining 75% effort levels at that time…this loss in productivity clearly outweighs the 1% benefit of increased fat loss.

Perhaps it’s just me, but this isn’t rocket science. As Joel points out, we’re all human, which means we’re all unique and therefore sometimes we simply have to ignore the science and mainstream.

From my perspective, morning workouts will work only for people who have a total gym at home or who work 2nd shift or who are on the roads all the time and staying in posh hotels that have a good gym. The only other group of people are the ones that already have a great body and are dedicated to maitain it that way and wake up crazy early in the morning to do so. Everyone else like me take the easy way out and workout in the evenings, I believe. What do you think Joey?

I am sitting here, still the zombie girl that I am each morning after waking to an alarm, chuckling. :) I have been dragging my ass out of bed each morning at 5 am so that I can get a cardio workout in before work. It is NOT my ideal way to start the day. However, I also go back to the gym at around 3:30 pm (after work) to do another session of cardio because I need to lose a large amount of weight and I don’t see results unless I am doing about 90 minutes of cardio 5x a week in combination with my 2 sessions of personal training per week.

Anyone else feel my pain?

Oh, and when I am not working, my ideal workout is at about 10:30 am.

Thanks, I have read so much about it and I am the opposite of you I am a morning person all the way. Most of the time common sense is the right sense it’s just not that common

7:30am-9am is my time slot. Even if I am a slow to get going in the morning, what I really like about the morning workouts is their ability to energize me — so while my warm-up may be often times be a little sluggish, by the second set I am rockin and rollin, and feel absolutely terrific after the workout — really helps with the energy for the day. Conversely, post work/evening workouts for me don’t have even near the same effect — not as much energy or motivation.

I think I am in love with you, Joel! The whole thing about Reese cup daydreams…fantastic! We ARE human and even though we choose to force our bodies to give us 100% in these crazy workouts, who doesn’t fantasize about gorging on their favorite treat (mine is also Reese cups!) It really put it all in perspective….it doesn’t matter WHEN you do it….JUST DO IT!!!!

Actually I don’t work out, except for some pushups and pullups throughout the day.

We work 12 hour shifts where I work, and I can barely make it to work by 7am, much less get a workout in before. I’ve tried, but I’m not a morning person either, in fact on the days I don’t work I often sleep until 10 am and stay up late, just like Joel. I used to try and drag myself out of bed around 4:30am and cram a workout in, usually I would just reset the alarm for 5:30 and go back to sleep. Obviously that doesn’t work. So now when I work I go straight to the gym after work, the rest of the week it usually fits in well around 4pm.

I guess we’re all wired differently though.

Greetings fellow Pagliarini (we must be from the same planet, it’s like you’re describing me!). I’ve always envied people who can wake up at 6.00 am with a peach-lustred skin and clear eyes ready to take on another day. Me, I wake up with a skin color the shade of an aspirin, two extra pair of eyelids, and before I get my morning coffe, a mood that isn’ to unlike nitrid acid. I totally blame my genes, since my entire family is, and always has been exactly the same (yes we had lovely breakfasts when I was a kid – they were eaten in complete silence). So I really believe that we are born unique. I’ve tried to turn myself into a morning person so mant times I lost count (I never get to bed before midnight regardless of when I need to wake up, so I sleep around 6-7 hours per night) and I’ve come to terms with the 6.30 asprin-shade. Thank God for tinted moisturizer!

To get back on track, you’ve probably guessed how I feel about morning-workouts. But I have learned to do morning cardio in the mornings before breakfast and even though I probably could sprint a bit faster if I did them at 2 pm, I like to just get them over with. But I’ve just started Turbulence Training so now I’ll do my cardio enclosed to my weightlifting and I hate doing those in the morning. You need a couple of meals in you body to gain maximal effect out of your weight sessions, and solving that with a larger breakfast is just going to make you work out John Romaniello-style (vomiting).

I train at my gym on campus, which is a 25 min busride away so I try to schedule my workouts to either right before or after I got a class. Once a week I take the bus up just to work out and then I do like to get it done as soon as possible, otherwise my day is completely shattered. So I guess I’m more than anything of the opinion that morning, noon or night doesn’t really matter. The only thing that does is that you actually get them done!

@doctorpat –
Dear “Doctor Pat”, You sound really unhappy in your marriage. I’m freaking out a bit because my husband is Pat and he is a doctor. Please tell me you aren’t married to me!

With 2 young kids, a full time job outside the home, and since I’m not a morning person, my work out times are usually at 11:30pm at home, after everyone goes to bed. I can focus and push myself more then. I tried it in the morning a day I woke up early and I found I had no strength at all. I also sleep better after my workout.

Thanks for this! I have tortured myself over and over, felt like a failure because I CAN’T workout in the AM – I just can’t do it. I set my alarm for an hour earlier than I need to get up to leave for work (I LEAVE my house at 7 a.m.) and each time I hit the snooze and say “f*ck it…” – and then proceed to beat myself up for my lack of discipline.

BUT – when I get off the train at night I walk RIGHT INTO my workout clothes and get busy. That’s when I have both the time and the adequate energy to get a good, quality workout in.

Having always thought I was doing myself a disservice for not doing AM workouts, I thank you for alleviating me of that particular piece of guilt (there’s plenty more about plenty of other things to keep me contrite though…)

I love shedding the stress of the workday by working out afterwards. It eases the tension in my neck and stretches out my legs after sitting at my desk all day. I sweat like crazy and feel like a new woman when its over, then I shower and I feel like the evening is a brand new day. All this time I thought I was substandard for not setting the alarm early. And man do I love them Reese’s. Thanks for sharing that.

I’m seriously nocturnal, so I do a little morning thing to wake me up, but not a serious workout. I like to workout about an hour after dinner about 8:30-9:30pm. I usually do so in the living room while our evening TV shows are on, I also like to multitask. It also works best for me to workout about an hour after eating a meal (like dinner) because I have blood sugar issues and if not fed properly, it can plummet quickly. Then, I have my snack, relax for another hour and go to bed.

I’m not a morning person AT ALL. I’m a zombie until noon at the best of times.

But even I have been able to track that I get the best results with first thing in the AM workouts, even when it feels like I can’t muster any intensity.

Those weak, “I can’t lift anything”, or “I can’t run any faster” exercise sessions still result in much faster fat loss, so I do them anyway. The real bonus is, there’s nothing better for waking you up than exercise, so the rest of my day goes much better too.

Cool!! Yea I cant even stay up I usually sleep at the gym sometimes LOL

Great post Joel, I feel the same way. I have my peak levels of strength and energy in the afternoon / evenings as well.

I think after work is best, 6-7pm. It relaxs the body and makes you sleep better at night. I would not work out as hard in the morning and would get tired later in the day at work.

@Vaseem – I agree with all your points all along. They are very true for my life. I used to workout everyday afterwork, but now I have fallen in love with the RESULTS morning workouts deliver.

I seriously beat myself up over not working out in the am. Doing BFL, everyone seemed to work out then and they suggested doing your workout before breaksfast. I could not do it! Genetically (I’m serious), I’m not a morning person, my mom is not, my son is not – I’ve learned to deal with it (and so has my husband) and stop beating my self up for not being or doing what I “should be.” I tried to work out a few times in the am and I SUCKED at it! So, I figured what I “should be” doing must be different from everyone else. I guess not so much! I work out about an hour before bed…and honestly, I get SUCH a great sleep! My only problem now is do I still have my protein shake or bar after my workout, yet so close to bedtime? Which is the lesser of two evils??

THANK YOU! Another awesome blog post. Joel, you are the man. I love reading your blogs even if I don’t always agree with what you say every time, I whole heartedly agree with everything you said in this post.

I don’t work out in the morning due to this thing called a “job.” I show up for work at 6 am, so I would have to go to the gym well before sunrise if I wanted a morning workout. In fact, it would be more like a really late-night workout. I’ve tried a lunch hour routine, but it just isn’t enough time. Evenings are for me, and those are often late, ending around 9 or 10 pm.

That said, there is a case for evening workouts. Metabolism increases for many hours after a workout, and for most people night time is the time of the day their body has reached its lowest metabolic rate. I prefer to boost my metabolism before bed, and believe that working out before I go to bed results in higher night-time metabolism, better rest, and probably more efficient muscle gain since my body has a chance to repair itself. The other major advantage I find to evening workouts is that I have no impending deadlines- so if I get into a good routine I can just keep going until I feel like quiting. I don’t have to stop my workout just so I can shower, dress and drive to work.

At 8:00 pm…thank’s as i have alway’s worried about the time in which i workout…….

I appreciated your perspective Joel. As a Youth Pastor, my schedule is like yours. Most nights I’m not in bed by midnight, and many its almost 2 am before I lay down. I always love that “late night” time, because that is when I can relax, and wind down from the day. That makes me a terrible morning person. Don’t even like to talk until 10 am. I find that going to workout around noon is the most productive time for me. That’s about the time I start getting “wound up” and it helps me be more focused in the gym. Sometimes I even wait until the evening, and go with a partner, but that’s only because of his schedule. If I wait until evening, I find a tendency to be more distracted, and sometimes even find excuses to not workout like I should, so noon is “primetime” for me. Thanks for your insight. Now I don’t have to feel guilty, because I “suck” in the morning! Kevin

@Vaseem –

I like that your post reminds us that sleep is something that can be approached with discipline. As you suggest, going to bed and waking at regular times comes with benefits, including the option to reduce the interval of sleep.

That being said, I must challenge you on a point:
Isn’t it a little dogmatic to say “Frankly if you’re over 30 and sleeping more than 6 hours a day, you need to rethink your priorities “?

Unless you’ve got a ton of studies to back the claim that people are better off both mentally and physically with only six hours, I would not presume to judge the tradeoffs others choose. And even with such studies, I might still not presume.