When, Exactly, to Schedule Your Workouts

[longknife]

My daily workouts consist of getting up from my electric scooter and into my desk chair and doing the reverse. So this article doesn’t especially help me. Bur, perhaps it will help some of you.

Research finds that performance varies drastically based on the time of day.

Evidence shows that performance on tasks that rely on physical and psychological capacity varies drastically based on the time of day. For example, a 2011 review article published in the journal Sports Medicine found that “the majority of components of sports performance—for example: flexibility, muscle strength, and short-term high power output—vary with time of day in a [predictable] manner.” Meanwhile, a 2013 paper published in the Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice concluded that time-of-day effects can explain up to 20 percent of the variance in performance on cognitive tasks.

I think we can see that in most sporting events. When do we see athletes at their top performance?

If your goal is to train hard while minimizing injury risk and performing at your best, you should schedule your workouts in the late afternoon.

Surprising? I think most people think they should work out first thing in the morning.

But you shouldn’t always work out in the afternoon. If you’re trying to lose weight, for instance, Pink highlights evidence showing that exercising first thing in the morning, prior to eating, in what are sometimes called “fasted” or “glycogen-depleted” workouts, can burn up to 20 percent more fat than workouts completed after you’ve had a meal. Yet it’s also important to be aware that the quality of your workout will suffer if you try this technique. You’ll also experience a heightened risk of illness and injury. (This isn’t rocket science: It’s hard to train well without fuel.) It’s for these reasons that Matt Dixon, a physiologist and founder of Purple Patch Fitness, says athletes should lower the intensity of their fasted workouts.

There’s much more about this @ When, Exactly, to Schedule Your Workouts - Outside - Pocket

And then comes this:

8 Morning Exercises You Should Do as Soon as You Get Out of Bed

They all seem to be stretching and loosening your body.

All @ The Best Morning Exercises to Do When You Get Out of Bed

 

[luchitociencia]

As a teenager I used to wake up at 5am and jogging to the beach (5 blocks from home) and run over dry and wet sand with bare foot for miles. Doing gymnastic exercises, returning home, taking a bath and having breakfast and going to school.

After finishing my studies and started to work, my jogging time schedule was greatly reduced and was alternative between mornings and nights.

And was so for so many years.

When you live alone, you are the absolute owner of your schedule, but when you have family, your responsibilities as spouse and parent become the priority and workout a secondary and sometimes the last in line in your life.

Wealthy people have plenty hours available for workout with desired schedules recommended by such and such expert, but if you can't follow those recommendations, just do workout every time you have the chance, that's all.

 

[DGS49]

The fact is that for people who actually do work out, their OTHER activities determine when they work out. If they can do it in the morning, at lunchtime at work, after work, or in the evening is usually determined by factors over which they have little control.

And the other factor that no one talks about is that you have to ENJOY your workout, or you will not keep doing it. If that means listening to your favorite music or a podcast, or mixing a workout with socializing at the gym, or going to a beautiful beach or trail, it is important to make the experience enjoyable so that you will keep doing it.

Unfortunately, the chances of starting with a "bad" body, working out, and ending up with a "good" body (that you maintain over a long term) are mighty slim. In my 70-year lifetime (and being a gym member for 50 of those years), I have only seen a few people who did it successfully. And I'm talking about maybe 5 people I know.