In many movies related to fitness and sports, the protagonist is usually shown to wake up early in the morning and go for a run.
The movement anyone decides to be committed to fitness, they start waking up early. Also in real life, many professional athletes wake up early in the morning at around 4 am and go for their run. Then there are these quotes like:
“wake up before your competition.”
“work when your competition is sleeping.”
Is there anything special or beneficial in waking up early and working out, or just waking up early? Does it have any relation to fitness?
All humans have a different chronotype. This means that every person will have high alertness, strength, blood pressure, temperature, feeling of drowsiness at different times of the day. Some people will feel sleepy at night and fresh in the morning, while some may feel the opposite. Simply, this is the reason why some are morning people, some are night owls and some are in between these two.
Individual chronotypes decide what time is the best to work out for every person. The time of the day when a person’s performance is as its peak is known as the acrophase. A night owl will feel terrible in the morning as that is not the ideal time or acrophase to work out for him/her and vice versa. This was revealed in a study and a systematic review by Jacopo A Vitale.
The good thing about the human body is that it adapts to different situations to ensure survival. A study by Nizar Souissi revealed that the participants could adapt to training at different times a day, at least in the case of the morning group. In the case of the evening training group, their peak torque and peak anaerobic power were in the evening than in the morning which means that a night owl will find it difficult to adapt to a morning training program.
Apart from individual comfort, does training at a particular time offer any more benefits? There are certain studies where the participants training in the evening experienced better results than their morning counterparts.
Here are the studies in favour of evening training:
Milan and colleagues study showed 30% more increase in quadriceps size in evening group.
Maria and colleagues showed that the evening group gained quadriceps size significantly faster, but only during weeks 13-24 of the study.
An unpublished study by Tim Scheett showed a significant increase in muscle size with a reduction in body fat for the evening group.
Malhotra and colleagues study showed a significant increase in bicep size for the evening group.
Lericollais and colleagues study found out that power output was higher in the evening than in the morning for a group of cyclists.
Here are the studies favoring morning training:
Hobson and colleagues study found out that exercise capacity in heat is greater in the morning than in the evening.
Souissi and colleagues study found out that performance improvements were greater after the morning training than evening training. The point to consider is that this study was conducted on 10-11-year-old boys.
Many studies showed no difference in the performance of any group. Here are the studies:
A meta-analysis by Grgic and colleagues showed that after training consistently in the morning, people are able to adapt and produce equal levels of strength in the morning and evening. The increases in strength and hypertrophy are similar irrespective of the time of the workout or when the assessments are conducted. Their acrophase was shifted.
Chtourou and colleagues study found out that the participants adapted to training at a certain point of the day. Before training, their performances were higher in the evening, but after 12 weeks of resistance training in the morning, there was very little difference between their morning and evening performances. However, the participants who trained in the evening had even better performance than the morning group. Still, this study does show that humans can adapt to training at different times of the day.
Another study by Chtourou showed no significant difference between muscular power or strength between morning and evening tests. People adapt to training at certain time by training consistently at that particular time.
Why is there a difference in performance at different times of the day? Why most of the research is leaning towards evening training? To answer this, more studies have to be looked at.
A study by Burley and Colleagues show that the participants had almost double cortisol levels in the morning as compared to the evening.
Bird and Tarpenning study also showed that cortisol levels are higher in the morning and lower in the evening.
Hayes and colleagues study shows the connection between testosterone, cortisol, resistance training, and their influence on circadian training. In the morning, testosterone levels are high, which may seem to be beneficial for building muscle. But, the cortisol levels are also very high which counteracts the high testosterone levels. Also, resistance training-induced testosterone response is much higher in the late afternoon.
The second reason is the core body temperature which is, generally, lowest at 4 am and highest at 6-7 pm along with the blood pressure. These two things also help in better performance.
This explains why evening training produced better results in most studies.
A missing key here is food. After a long night’s sleep, almost every person is dehydrated and a little hungry. This is not a bad thing, but intense exercise does require readily available energy. An athlete’s performance in the morning depends on whether the person is in a fed or fasted state. In a study by Lemon and Mullin, six subjects cycled for an hour in a fed and fasted state. The results showed that nitrogen losses were doubled during the fasted state with a protein loss of 13.7 grams which was 10.4% of the total caloric cost. Another Portuguese study by Alves and colleagues found out that cortisol levels were much higher after low-intensity cardio in a fasted state compared to a fed state. Higher cortisol levels and protein loss are not desirable for anyone seeking to maximize muscle mass. Exercise in a fasted state is suboptimal for anyone trying to maximize hypertrophy.
Looking at all of these studies, it is clear that morning workout has no special benefit. If you want to work out in the morning and you are in a fasted state, try to get one meal before it. Carbohydrate and protein shakes can come in very handy here. If muscles are not a concern then fasted cardio is alright.
Evening time is a little better to workout according to hormones, but this does not mean you should completely quit fitness if morning is the only time available. Your body will adapt. A slightly suboptimal workout is way better than not working out at all.
The question still remains, if evening time is slightly better to work out, why do professional athletes work out in the morning? Is it not true that the tiniest drawback can lead to the loss of a championship? When we look at the workouts of athletes like Mike Tyson or the Rocky and Creed movies, what they are doing is outdoor running.
You need to realize that these guys are celebrities. If they go out for a run at 6 or 7 am, there will be a huge crowd chasing them. They have to finish their running before everyone else wakes up.
The air is much cleaner in the morning as there are no vehicles around, no obstacles. The streets are vacant for anyone to run.
The temperature is cool and comfortable for running. Running in the afternoon heat is not a good idea.
Running also released endorphins, the feel-good hormones, that provide a good start to the day.
It saves time for other activities like training under a coach, sparring for later in the day.
In the case of actors, they have to shoot for hours. So, morning is the only time they have, to work out.
In most cases, it is just a psychological benefit of training when the opponent is sleeping.
So, if the streets were not vacant, cars were running around like it was prime time, the air was no better, then there is no special benefit to running in the morning.
For the average man, any workout time is good as long as the person is not in a fasted state. There is another quite popular myth, fasted cardio burns more fat. But, this is not true, and fasted cardio can cause a little protein loss instead of fat loss.
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