The Best Time of Day to Train

Raphael Knaier + Ralf Roth

Have you ever wondered when the best time of day is for a workout? Have you noticed differences in your performance between the morning and the afternoon? Are you looking for reasons to justify modifying physical training time for your unit? This episode will dive into all of these questions and more.

Raphael Knaier and Ralf Roth are part of a research team from the Department of Sport, Exercise, and Health at the University of Basel in Switzerland. For this study, they teamed up with the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Medical Chronobiology Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital to investigate if the time of day of exercise influences the degree of improvements in physical performance or health-related outcomes.

You'll often see headlines in the news touting revolutionary findings that one time of day is superior. When you talk to experts on the research though, you'll often find that the answer is a bit muddier. Even if, on average, one time of day is better, that does not mean it's better for everyone or every type of training or outcome goal. Raphael and Ralf explain how many factors like chronotype, meal timing, and habituation to certain training times play a part.

Tune in to learn more, and if you want to go straight to the source you can ⁠read the full text of their article here⁠.