When we set out to start practice A sports, or we want to improve our performance, different things certainly come to mind question about how to organize our sessions education. One of them is usually related to the best time of day to practice physical activity. Is it better to train in the morning? Or should I go to the gym in the evening? What if what I do is a long-term workout? What is real in everything we hear about biorhythms? Why do I feel better when I train at a certain time?
We will analyze these aspects of the following lines performance, as well as the influence it has on our rest practice sports at one hour or another. First of all, you have to understand that we cannot understand performance without a correct Recovery.
Hormone levels, biorhythms and performance
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A good physical performance the day is in many cases related to a good quality of sleep at night. This allows BODY a suitable one Recovery and therefore better performance the next day. For those people who suffer from sleep problems, this could be an issue of great relevance.
We have to keep in mind that sleep quality It can be altered by the biorhythms or circadian rhythms of the body. They depend on hormonal changes appearing. In this way, and answering this section, the question would be: according to our biorhythms, will it be better to train in the morning or in the afternoon?
In principle, in the morning and in healthy people, we find higher levels of cortisol and by Testosterone. The first of them is called stress hormone, and is related to catabolism, or in other words, in what interests us here, protein degradation.
Testosterone in the meantime, it is a anabolic hormone, ie protein synthesis and its high levels during the morning could counteract cortisol levels.
We could think of taking advantage effects from that HORMONE for better performance. However, and although it seems that training in the afternoon (for example, strength training) helps to lower cortisol levels in the last hours of the day, facilitating subsequent rest, studied are contradictory in this respect.
In this way, at this time we can not guarantee that morning or afternoon training has a significant relevance if we keep to hormone levels.
Training and nervous system
time To which education it could have a different effect on us autonomic nervous system. This in turn is subdivided into the nervous system cute Yes parasympathetic. The first of them is related to situations of stress and alertness, while the second has the opposite effect on our body, in order to understand us, it generates a state of calm in it.
practice of exercise creates changes in the autonomic nervous system, which can alter the quality of sleep during the night. To analyze and understand the changes in this regard, you can study the changes it causes on heart rate.
First of all, we must understand that a intense training the heart rate increases after exertion, due to the stimulus on the sympathetic nervous system. In this sense, we know that an afternoon workout could worsen the quality of sleep for some people. Moreover, science shows us that a education of morning generates an increase towards the last hours of the day of the parasympathetic system and does not interfere with the quality of sleep or recovery for the next day.
Therefore, it would be possible to find people who, after a workout towards the end of the day, find it difficult to rest, something unwanted. In this regard, it would be advisable to train in the morning to benefit, in addition, from trigger effect which exercise has on the body.
But when do you get better performance then?
We already have an idea about effects that education and the different moments of the day in our body. But if I want to get the best performance possible and I don’t have sleep problems, when is it better to train?
science it is more or less conclusive in terms of training of force. Basically, if we have to choose, we should train in the afternoon. At this time of day levels of ENABLE Yes muscle contraction they are usually older. Therefore, compared to the morning, higher performance peaks are obtained.
The same does not happen in the case aerobic training (carrying out activities with lower intensity, but for longer periods of time, in order to obtain greater resistance), where there does not seem to be much difference between result obtained at some hours or others.
The same way, anaerobic training (Consists of high-intensity activities such as lifting weights, short sprints at high speed or any exercise that requires a lot of effort for a short period of time), short-term, reaches the best performance peaks in the afternoon. noon. This may be due to growth body temperature during this period, which has a good warming effect on the body, promoting a better state later.
Even with this information, we have to take into account some aspects. The first is that strength gains and hypertrophy are similar, regardless of the time of day you train. On the other hand, body has a sea capacity of adaptation, and if the training is done regularly in the morning, the performance will be comparable to that of the afternoons. So we should not worry if our training should be done before lunch, as long as it has continuity.
Finally, it is important to note that if we have to compete in the morning or in the afternoon, we will adapt noestraw BODY to training in the same time frame.
Health and training at different times of the day
We do not want to close this article without making a brief note about effects how about health train at different times of the day. It is a broad and complex issue, but we would like to give an example: the time of day, the time of day and the characteristics of the sporting activity could be elements to be taken into account when improving some health problems.
Let’s start by mentioning a topic that will always be relevant: loss fat or overweight. In this regard, some studies show that training in the morning and before breakfast could have a positive effect about him BODY, because a 24-hour increase in fat oxidation was observed. This stimulus would not be similar if the training took place after breakfast or throughout the day.
On the other hand, a aerobic training the morning could have a positive effect on blood pressure and would normalize its values, probably due to the modulation that exercise has on the autonomic nervous system.
That way, when we go to choose the time of day to train, it will not just be a matter of physical performance, but a process of individualized programming guided by a professional who takes care of the general health of the person.
conclusions
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Whether we start strength training or do one anaerobic training, the afternoon is definitely the best time of the day to do it.
aerobic training or long-term, it would have no inconvenience in performing both in the morning and in the afternoon.
However, we must be able to to adapt education to needs of athlete. In this way, if the competition is at a certain time, the training must be performed at a similar time to achieve an adaptation of the body to the desired time interval.
Finally, we need to keep in mind that training is not just a process of finding performance, but that circulation in itself involves Health. In this way, it may be advisable for some people to perform them physical activity morning. That way, your workout won’t change sleep quality and will allow them better control over their weight and more efficient fat burning.
* This article was published on The Conversation and reproduced here under a Creative Commons license. Click here to read the original version.
* David Recuenco Serrano is the director of the Bachelor of Science in Physical Activity and Sports. In addition, he is the director of the double degree in CCAFYD and physiotherapy, Nebrija University.