terrymorse 

Does the time of day you exercise make a difference? Can we age-enhanced folks benefit from riding or working out in the morning?

This Training Peaks article is making that claim (with citations): Benefits of Working Out in the Morning

Some of the claimed benefits over afternoon workouts:

• grows more new brain cells
• more stabilized mood
• reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
• increased fat metabolism
• morning strength workout increases testosterone (men only?)
• morning strength workout increases afternoon power and strength

So brain, heart, fat maintenance, testosterone, power, strength -- Looks like every aging man's (and woman's?) wish list.

Personal anecdote: I've been doing some pre-breakfast strength exercises. Since November, and I have noticed that my energy level feels higher than it was when I was just riding in the mid-day/afternoon.

Is anyone here doing morning exercise and noticing a difference?

gobicycling

I always do morning strength and stretch training. Thanks to your post and article, I now know why!

rsbob 

Interesting article with good citations. Now I just have to revise my training schedule. However I always due my upper body/core in the AM, but ride outside in the afternoon (Fall/Winter) because the temps have warmed up. Don’t know if I am too inclined to change that.

staehpj1

I have always preferred early morning rides, runs, skiing, whatever. For road riding it is a bit tough when it is really cold, but I mostly trail ride in the colder weather and we don't have all that many to far subfreezing mornings here anyway. I get out at the low for the day most days so I get a ride or two in at 20 F and lots of rides in the 30s F. We get a morning in the teens F now and then, but not every year.

Even when I lived where it was colder I liked getting out early. I did tend to do something other than road ride on the coldest days though. If there is snow XC skiing or snowshoeing can be fun, but MTB riding is a great alternative that doesn't need snow. Getting out on a zero F morning is something I enjoy. I never lived anywhere that it typically got much colder than that.

Carbonfiberboy 

I do my stretching, planks, and pushups before breakfast. Then on workout days, gym after breakfast, riding in the afternoon. The gym's quieter in the morning and it's warmer in the afternoon.

wolfchild

My favorite time to ride on the weekends is to start very early in the morning and be done before noon hour or in the afternoon if it's a longer ride. I have also commuted for 12 years straight which allowed me to start my rides very early. I am an early morning person....Strength training is not practical for me to do in the morning because I wake up very early and I have a very physically demanding job which i start early and finish late. Doing strength training in the morning during weekdays would be counter productive for me. Trying to do strength training when I come home from work in the late afternoon or evening would be pointless when I have just spend 11 hours doing heavy lifting and non stop moving around at my work. When I come home all I want to do is grab a beer and relax and rest... Cycling is really the only form of exercise that I can do early in the morning.

Random11

I ride pretty much daily after breakfast. My thought is that morning exercise will raise my metabolism for the rest of the day. Maybe the real reason I ride in the morning, though, is that it fits in with my schedule for the rest of the day.

John E

Any exercise is better than none, so do it when you can. I lift weights at the local Y when they first open (6 am weekdays, 7 am weekends). When I walk/jog/bike for transportation, that occurs both early and late in the day. I like to bike for exercise in the mornings to avoid peak traffic and peak sunlight intensity. I have so far avoided skin cancer, despite my Celtic complexion, my freckled "redhead skin," as my father called it.

Iride01 

Still, what is the comparison of morning activity to those of low activity at all? And then the comparison of the people with similar activity at other times of the day to those with low activity at all.

Might be that the difference of the two groups of active people, while drastically different to each other isn't so drastic at all in the grand scheme.

Beldar77

I like to ride early on weekend mornings to beat the car traffic. It is almost always more peaceful too.

OldsCOOL

I see the same effects by riding. Getting on the bike and gradually progressing. I don’t do mornings. Late mornings, afternoons and evenings are more productive, therefore my preference.

BTinNYC 

I liked the common sense advice; train in the morning if your event starts in the morning.

terrymorse 

​​​​​
Well, this study that was cited in the Training Peaks article: Exercise Increases 24-h Fat Oxidation Only When It Is Performed Before Breakfast, compared morning exercise, afternoon exercise, evening exercise, and no exercise at all. So there's a good across-the-board comparison.

For 24-hour fat oxidation (fat "burning"), all of the groups were about the same as the no exercise group. Except the morning exercisers (blue line) -- their fat burning was considerably higher:





Take-Away: If your goal is fat burning, exercise before breakfast.

canklecat

Can't say I've noticed any difference. When I was younger and working full time plus part time jobs, family, etc., I often bicycle commuted to and from work. And played racquetball or other workouts during the day. Of course I naturally had more energy then. But I had a pattern of fading out mid-afternoon. No amount of adjusting my workout schedule, diet, etc., made any difference.

Since resuming cycling in 2015 after a long layoff (recovering from car wreck injuries in 2001 took years to get off a walking cane), I've tried morning workouts. But I often feel sleepy afterward rather than energized. Occasionally if I had insomnia I'd go for a wee hour bike ride, get home by 5-6 AM before morning rush hour insanity, and sleep like a rock for the rest of the day.

Despite having early morning job starts for years, including 4-6 AM starts when I was in the military, I've never naturally been a morning person. After retiring I didn't see any reason to fight my natural body clock. So now I exercise when I feel like it. That tends to be midday at the soonest, often late afternoon or evening. Occasionally I'll get an urge to go for long bike rides after midnight, when there's little or no traffic.

Other times a bike ride, run or home workout session will rev me up so much I can't sleep for 24 hours or so. No connection with caffeine intake, which I've cut way back on anyway.

After catching COVID in late 2021 I've needed more sleep. When I was younger, working full time, caring for older family members, I usually got by on 5 hours sleep a night. After age 60 it was 8 hours. After catching the Super Cooties I usually sleep 9-12 hours, sometimes intermittently with a period of waking up and reading for an hour or so between hibernations. If I try to force myself up after 6-8 hours sleep I don't feel better. No point in trying to force my body to fit some habits and patterns promoted by the latest pop culture wellness articles.

No idea what makes my body tick and I don't even worry about it anymore. As long as I'm physically active 3-5 days/nights a week, eat a good diet, get plenty of rest, I'll just go with the flow. Recently my ortho doc noted that I seemed unusually young for age 65. I'll take that as a clue that whatever I'm doing, it's great for my cosmetics. As the Billy Crystal caricature Fernando said, "My darling, it is better to look good than to feel good. And you look marvelous."

rumrunn6

in practicality, who has the choice, consistently?

bblair

What I find interesting about this graph, is that they chart accumulated value at 24 hours, but 24 hours after morning exercise. If we assume (I know, can't do that) that energy expenditure continues for some time after exercise, shouldn't each group be measured at 24 hours of their respective efforts?

Perhaps the evening athletes didn't work as hard because they worked all day and were tired by then. Nothing to do with time of day, but with real life activities.

All that said, I do prefer morning rides. Why? Because now I am retired and have the time. I would be too exhausted by 5pm. Now I can ride early, go home and take a nap.

prj71

She gives me a pretty good workout every morning.

terrymorse 

What does it matter when you start the 24-hours? The entire 24 hours gets recorded, no matter when you start it.

Carbonfiberboy 

When this thread started, it was not obvious to me that when they said "morning workout," it meant fasted, before breakfast. After an overnight fast is what should be discussed, which for most of us is not our usual morning workout. I did a quick calculation for effort level during that 1 hour pre-breakfast ride - it's low zone 2, way below VT1. That'd actually be really easy to do if one liked a late breakfast or an early rise. I used to do 30' of that every morning on my rollers, then get my wife up and I'd make breakfast. I didn't notice any difference, but then I wasn't looking for one. It definitely didn't interfere with whatever else I was doing that day.

bblair

Maybe so, but that is not what the chart showed.

As an aside, yesterday morning in my Google News feed was an article that "definitively showed" that evening exercise was more beneficial than morning workouts. No, I didn't bookmark the article. But these types of articles tend to, and are clearly written, to confirm someone's foregone conclusions.

After adjusting for ALL variables-which is impossible-does it really matter?

For athlete's working a night shift, for example....does "morning" mean before their work? (our evening), or during daylight hours? (their evening, our morning)

RH Clark

Dr. Andrew Huberman has a lot to say about early morning sunlight and exercise. Here is a random sample. I'm sure there are better vids, but maybe it will interest anyone enough to look into his podcast for more info.

Carbonfiberboy 

For many years on this forum there's been a relatively constant message that burning a higher proportion of fat during moderate effort cycling will make you a faster cyclist over a long course. Chapple wrote a whole book about it. While many riders suggest that your percentage of fat burned will increase no matter what if you ride enough. there's always been a suggestion that going out fasted for a couple hours will get you the most progress in the least time. I think both those things are true. The study in the OP confirms that latter to my satisfaction, though I think the bump would have been even larger had the ride been for 2 hours. I've found that 2 hours on the rollers just below VT1 really does the job for me. I can't do that outdoors - it's too hilly here.

terrymorse 

Not maybe so, definitely so.

It is what the graph shows. The starting point is 6:00 AM, and the ending point is 6:00 AM. They could have picked any other start/stop time, and the values would be identical.

79pmooney

My racing days, I'd get up 5ish, dress and ride 40 miles or so (Boston's famous "Allis Loop"), shower, breakfast and be at work at 9. (1 mile bike commute.) That worked really well! So, fasted, no food or drink before, and one waterbottle I probably wouldn't touch. By mid-summer, my fast rides were getting down to two hours, obeying all stoplights and respecting, if not stopping, at stop signs.

I bugged the heck out of my co-workers because I'd show up ready to work, not groggy from a late night before and needing that coffee to just function.

And edit: I'm reading Everyday Ayurveda. Author talks about being awakened by her (Indian) dad an hour and a half before sunrise to experience the quietest and highest air quality time of day. I've just started getting up that early and simply sitting out doors for a few minutes and absorbing the wonderful air. Makes for a better day every time I do it and reminds me of when I used to spend that time riding in the silent world.

Clyde1820

My own anecdotal "evidence" ...

Always have been a "morning" person, in that I've functioned better in the first third to half of the day. Even more so, when exercising early in the morning. If for no other reason than it gets the blood pumping, gets more oxygen and nutrients to the cells, ejects more waste products from those cells, loosens me up, and requires the brain and body to pay attention to the workout's challenges ... all rather than trying to face the day's first challenges without that boost.

Can't say what the impacts have been on fat consumption, stress-related reductions and all the rest, as compared to exercising later in the day. (For many years, I often did two-a-day workouts, one early and one later.) But it has worked well for me.