Training in the morning. For some it is the only way to get enough exercise in their day, for some it's when they have the most energy and for some it sounds less fun than a 14-hour long haul international flight with a screaming 1year old. (My new "10" on a scale of shithouse things to do) Is it something you should be doing?
Is it healthier to train in the morning? There seems to be two main claims to support the assertion that training in the morning is healthier, if you have heard another one let me know so I can do some research.
1: That you burn more fat in the mornings, this is known as fasted or semi-fasted training.
This seems like a slam dunk for morning training doesn't it? Burning fat is the purpose most people are at the gym, so anything that does that effectively has to be good right? Unfortunately it isn't that simple. Your body is an incredibly effective machine for converting food into sugar for energy and fat for storage, personally I wish my body was much worse at it. This means that although yes, you will burn more fat as a percentage of your total calorie expenditure in the morning your body will simply resupply your sugar stores and store any excess calories as soon as you eat. 300 calories is 300 calories irrespective of when you ate them and if you did 200 calories worth of exercise and ate 300 calories worth of food you are in a 100 calorie surplus regardless of the timing of either of those events.
2: That you burn more calories throughout the day because of training in the morning.
The theory is that because you got up and moved around so early in the day your metabolism will be all fired up and you will burn more calories throughout the day. This makes a lot of sense, the more alert and active you are the more calories you will burn and your base metabolic rate, the energy you burn just living, accounts for about 75% of your total calorie expenditure so getting your metabolism up and racing away as early as possible is a great way of maximising your energy use throughout the day. This is a big plus for training in the morning, however you can get your metabolic rate up early by eating a good breakfast. It wont achieve as much but it will help.
Reasons to sleep in.There are a couple of good reasons to avoid early morning training sessions and at least one shitty one. In no particular order.
1: Higher Cortisol levels. Your body releases a whole cocktail of chemicals into your system while you sleep and some of them take awhile to get cleaned out once you are up and moving. Cortisol in particular is elevated in the morning and prolonged exposure to cortisol has a raft of negative effects, immune system suppression and increased abdominal fat deposits for example. This is a mostly a problem for people with high stress jobs and "stress heads", who will have plenty of cortisol released through the day so no need to start off by elevating it.
2: Increased risk of injury. You know that sluggish morning feeling? Well it applies on the neurological level as well, you are, more or less, a little uncoordinated in the mornings. your reaction time is worse, your flexability is less and your recovery systems are slower, all of which mean you are slightly more likely to injure yourslef if you are training hard. This isn't normally a problem because...
3: It is harder to train hard. Less blood sugar, metabolsim sluggish and half asleep, is it any wonder you are a little weaker and slower?
4: You need your sleep. It is hard to prioritise sleeping, you probably stay up later than you should already but sleep is way down your list of priorites so you will wake up earlier without getting to bed any sooner. Seriously, take it from someone with a small child, sleep deprevation is awful.
5: Your trainer is still half asleep. Ok, its not a great reason but just as it is harder to train at 100% in the morning it is also harder to be a trainer at 100% in the morning. If you feel like you need a lot of help and motivation you will potentially get a little more help from the trainers and the others in your group by training a little later in the day. Or you could bring me a coffee. Skim milk flat white, no sugar. Thanks.
So that kind of wraps up up the physological aspects of training early but as we know the body is only half the battle. Check back in a few days and we can have a look at some of the social and physchological aspects of training early
Mac
