A scientific guide of WHEN to exercise – curated from Daniel Pink’s book WHEN, that I reviewed in yesterday’s journal. It is worth the investment of time, to find out our chronotype to optimize efficiency for all kinds of daily activities.
Exercise in the morning, if you want to:
Lose Weight: our blood sugar is the lowest when we wake up, morning exercise usually uses our body fat stored in our tissues to supply the energy we need. When we exercise after eating, we use the energy from the food we’ve just consumed. Morning exercises may burn 20% more fat than post-food workouts.
Boost Mood: morning exercises boost mood, even if it’s just to walk your dog or do some stretching at home during the lockdown. When exercising in the morning, the elevated mood tends to set the tone of the day and lasts throughout.
Keep Routine: studies shown we are more likely to adhere to our workout routine when we do it in the morning. If you have been struggling to start a new habit, morning exercise can benefit you.
Build Strength: our physiology, like the testosterone hormone, changes throughout the day. Testosterone helps build muscles, and it peak in the morning, so if you are doing weight training, early mornings are the most effective.
Exercise in the late afternoon or evening, if you want to:
Avoid Injury: our muscles are warmer, more elastic, and more flexible towards the second half of the day – that’s why we have the word “warm-up” before exercises. Injuries are less common when our body temperature peaks towards late afternoon or early evening.
Perform Best: apart from less injuries, afternoon and evening also helps to sprint faster and lift more. Lung function is the highest at this time of the day, your circulation system distributes more oxygen and nutrients. This is also the time of day when reaction time quickens, hand-eye coordination sharpens, and heart rate and blood pressure drop. Fun fact, a disproportionate number of Olympic records (especially running and swimming) are set in the late afternoon and early evening.
Video is a 60min full body workout I have been doing lately, taken on Day 26 after I started home workout, currently on Day 63
a little twist. 