Be honest.

Are you a slug in the morning?

There’s some research that shows that optimal times to workout are actually in the afternoon or early-ish evening anyway. With one interesting caveat – which I’ll get into in a moment.

But did you know there’s a THING that helps predict what time is optimal for working out? It’s called chronobiology. (Here’s an INFOGRAPHIC and INFOGRAPHIC)

“Hebidibibity?”

Chronobiology. It’s basically the science of your natural body rhythms. The clock that’s ticking and putting different systems to work. For example we are designed to wanna sleep when it’s dark, because light is a cue to the brain to be awake (hence why screen time before bed makes it tough to get to sleep because it disrupts the melatonin release darkness brings on that cues sleepiness).

This internal rhythm does a lot of stuff – if you are aware of it, you’ll know when is best to do things like take certain medications; but, it’s also great to know when hormones like testosterone, cortisol, and Growth hormone are at their peak or when your body temperature is nice and toasty because then you’ll know when it’s best to train.

Why are these three hormones so important? Well, in short – Growth hormone is stellar at repairing muscle tissue (which we want because we want a faster metabolism), testosterone grows muscles and strength (which makes it more fun to train), and cortisol breaks down muscle (which sucks).

“So.. when do each of them peak?”

Growth hormone is highest within the first 90 minutes of sleep! It also raises after training, but only for a short period of time. It’s most effective when it is sustained which makes it so crucial that you actually sleep. Other than this HUGE factor, there’s not too much you need to know because you can’t pick a training time based on when it peaks unless you’re sleeping or already training.

The other two are highest in the morning. Testosterone – remember: muscle builder – has a nice spike at around 9am to oppose the effects of an early morning cortisol spike on muscle breakdown.

So here’s the thing – if you train early-early morning, when cortisol is peaking, it’ll trip up your coordination because it prevents your neuromuscular system from really being able to ROCK it. Less important, but noteworthy, you also miss the upswing of testosterone which happens a couple hours later.

The take-home of this one is get your sleep and try not to train when cortisol is peaking because it’ll suck and you’ll feel like crap.

Your body actually seems to like to train in the afternoon because your body temperature is exactly where it needs to be to have nice warm muscles and connective things. Not only that things like the little enzymes that make energy in your muscles are revved up and ready to go, and muscles function better because of raised levels of calcium and inorganic phosphate.

“But Krista I thought it’s best to workout early on an empty stomach!”

Well, aside from just being tighter and uncoordinated in the morning, let’s look and see if there’s any real benefit from the empty-stomach thing.

The theory is that once you’ve fasted over night, then workout, you deplete the ‘sugar’ in your muscles and with no food you’ll turn into a fat burning machine. And, like all things science-y, there are studies that prove that yes, it will increase the ‘burn’ for 24 hours, but most studies show it doesn’t really matter. What is more relevant is when TWO AWESOME HORMONES are released: epinephrine and norepinephrine.

Now I know I may have just lost you – but all to say that these two awesome hormones release fat for use! Yay! Meaning instead of the big stored fat glob, these hormones start an effect that breaks fat down into usable wee pieces!

So how do these hormones get released? EXERCISE! And the thing is – the release of these hormones is actually higher when you exercise at night than in the morning.

Ok. So it looks like all arrows point to afternoon or nighttime workouts being optimal. But, all of that said, what is this caveat I mentioned at the beginning of all of this..?

Here we go: CAVEAT.

Warm ups.

Yep.

As long as you make your bod WARM first with a real warm up – not just a quick side bend or two, but something dynamic or with light sets of the actual exercises you are planning to do – it doesn’t really matter what time you train. And truth be told? What works for me may make YOU feel like crap. Even in my own training experience I began LOVING afternoons, moved into late late night sessions, to really early morning sessions, and now back to mid-afternoons.

Either way, if increasing your core temperature is a nice kickstart to a workout, it seems to me it’s just a nice way to start your day in general.

There’s gotta be something in all these interviews with successful people who state that morning meditation and exercise are key to their success, right?

So. Why not try this little morning wake-up today or tomorrow or at whatever point relevant to when you are reading this? It’s a quick 8 minutes and gets all of the parts of you moving. There’s a little squeezing, a little pushing, a little twisting, a little yoga.. Man I feel good just thinking about it. So go ahead and put on a bra and watch this video.

So you can stop being a slug.

Unless that’s your gig.