from Netcape.com Home news comes the latest guesses. Of course, the article answers as we all know: it depends. But it gives a few leads that can be researched further if you are so inclined.
---------------------------------------
The Best Time of Day to Exercise Is...
...the late afternoon. Or is it the morning? It depends.
Late afternoon
Dr. Phyllis Zee, a neurologist at Northwestern University, offers these common-sense reasons for exercising after lunch instead of before breakfast:
Your muscle strength is at its highest.
You're less likely to injure yourself.
Unlike the very early morning, you're awake and alert.
Besides, she has the science to prove it. Zee points to the delicate circadian rhythms in our brains--our internal body clocks--that govern when we wake and when we sleep. She asserts that working out later in the day is more productive and beneficial for our bodies because according to our internal clocks, this is the time for our best physical performance. "One of the things that circadian rhythms does is that it determines when your best performance time is," Zee told CNN. "Your ability to perform changes throughout 24 hours."
Circadian rhythms govern more than our sleep time. They also help regulate our blood pressure, body temperature, and even impact our mood. "These are rhythms that are innate," she said to CNN. "They are in almost any organism, whether you are an animal or a plant, and they recur every 24 hours."
Our body temperature is a key factor when we exercise. In the afternoon, our temperature is one to two degrees higher than it is in the morning and that makes our muscles more supple. That, in turn, lowers the risk of injury. Our maximum body temperature occurs between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Then it starts to decline.
Morning
If you're a lark and prefer that up-with-the-sun run over an afternoon jog, set your alarm early. Getting regular exercise is so important to your good health that you should do it when it works best for you--no matter what time of day it is.
Besides, morning exercise has one advantage over afternoon exercise: It jumpstarts the body's metabolism to burn calories better all day long. "In middle-aged and younger adults, it's probably not a big difference for them in terms of their exercise time," exercise physiologist Richard Cotton told CNN. "It is really their lifestyle and what works for them that's really important when determining your exercise time."
But which is better?
The best way to determine if morning or evening exercise is better for you may be based on your eating habits. Tom Thomas, a nutritional sciences professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, says the best time of day for you to exercise can be determined based on when you eat the biggest meal. He says it's best to exercise 12 hours before eating a large or high-fat meal. So if you enjoy a big dinner, exercise in the morning. If breakfast is when you eat the most calories, then exercise in the late afternoon or evening.
Writing in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Thomas says that exercise--especially when performed in 10-minute bouts separated by 20-minute rest periods--will lower triglycerides, the artery-blocking fat in the bloodstream. But this fat-busting benefit only lasts about 24 hours. That's why you need to exercise every day--no matter what time of day you choose to do it!
for about 3 years, i was a "get up at 4:30 in the morning" workout guy. not sure what happened but about 2 months ago, it just wasn't happening anymore.
so, my employer was flexible and allowed me to come in to work earlier, and leave earlier so i decided to experiment with working out in the afternoon. now i'm starting my workout at 4:00 in the evening.
i've been doing this now for about a month and i love it. i feel much more flexible, more energetic, and i can just feel myself giving my full 100% each workout.
i know i could always go back to the early morning workouts but, i think i'm a convert on this issue though.
__________________
"Don't ever think you have got it figured out!"
-Lee Taft
I've gone the opposite direction. I prefer to get it in early now, although I don't do it extremely early. I have to have been awake for at least an hour or two before I hit it. I have a harder time getting to it in the afternoon because I have too many distractions. Mostly because I own the place though, and when there's a crowd, EVERYONE wants to talk to me. Much easier when there is no one around.
december will make 3 years i've been waking up at 4am to lift. it must be nice having a choice what time you workout.
__________________
They get a program that lasts 74 weeks, and this week calls for a protocol of four sets of seven partial quarter arm extensions with an L-bar twist doing a 12-0-9 tempo with 32.9% of their projected monthly three rep max. Daniel John
Ive worked out in the morning, noon, afternoon and evening. And will do any based on my schedule, however in my perfect world I would pic a time when I dont have anything else to do in the day (provided that my eating schedule cooperates) so its likely to be noon or afternoon.
Working out at 5am sucks because I have warmup a whole lot more and I frankly am not as strong in the morning as in the afternoon. On the plus side Im energetic for the rest of the day.
Evening is good because Im more alert than the morning but when I leave, Im wired and unless Im going to bed really late it could throw off my sleep pattern.
In short my vote goes to afternoon [img]smile.gif[/img]
__________________
"The strongest steel goes through the hottest fires."-Anonymous
"When you begin to believe nothing is heavy, all weights become light." -Rossbow
"Just remember, somewhere there is a little Chinese girl warming up with your max."-Jim Convroy
"It's a round hole, dammit. Everyone fits."--Anonymous Mod at Strengthmill
In the summer i was doing it at 1 in the afternoon to get it in before practice. Now im doing it at around 4 o clock and i love it, i got plenty of energy(once i get going) and i find myself pushing harder then ever before.
90% of the time I workout at 5 pm. But when I travel for work to conventions where they take every waking hour of my time, I do it at 5:30 or 6 am. Initially it hurts badly getting up this early but I forget about it about 10 minutes into my workout. 4 is damn early though! I don't know if I could do that one.
Ideally I would like to do it at about 10 or 11 am, but because I do it at 5 on weekdays, I like to keep it around that same time on weekends as well provided I don't have anything else going on. But I have OCD so that's probably why I do that.
I've done both, when I was in high school in the summer our weightroom was at 6 a.m. So even though it was like a two minute drive I'd wake up at 5:15, take a shower and drive around with my windows down and the radio up to fully wake up. I don't miss that much...
Now it's afternoons and early evenings, pretty easy to get in with my schedule, I'm sorta like Danny now though, if it was that early I might not even lift much.
__________________
DKing: I would rather lift with naked old dudes
You know im a newbie at the lifting game, and i used to workout early mornings as well, 8:00am when I worked afternoons, and I loved this routine. Now im on permanent days im up at 6:00am to start work at 7:00am, off work at 3:00pm and Tue+Thur (Sat'morn), i head straight for the gym and usually lift from 3:30 to 4:30 and then home for supper before 5:00.
I hated this routine for the first two weeks, because i was menatlly exhausted from work and 'laboured' to train. The mornings feel like a better work out and a great start to the day, the late afternoons feel like "i wanna go home now" or "am I done yet". But I have found a positive to see me through...the afternoon sessions at my gym are filled with different guys lifting and ive seen some amazingly strong guys my build(ish), it has been a real eye opener to what experienced lifters can lift, and its giving me some exposure...so its not so bad.
For me, it is "Whenever I can fit it in". There are so many variables to my workout time that I really don't have much choices about the timings. Right now, morning 8:00 - 9:00 is working for me. Sometime back it was 12:30 - 1:30 in the afternoon. I am satisfied as long as I can hit the Gym 5 days a week.
Linear Mode
