When's The Best Time Of Day To Workout?
by Shin Ohtake creator of Max Workouts

Will you get better results if you workout in the morning or the afternoon? Some say exercising in the morning forces your body to utilize fat as the energy source, so it's the best time to workout if you want optimum fat loss. Others say your lean muscle building and fat loss hormones peak in the afternoon, so if you want a better body you'd better workout later in the day. So which is it, AM or PM?

Before we start talking times, let's quickly go over how your biological clock works. Circadian rhythm is your internal clock. It follows a natural cycle and greatly influences how you feel, how you sleep, what you crave and how much energy you have. Your natural cycle controls your body's physiological functions by dictating the timing, quantity, and quality of hormones and neurotransmitters it produces. In a nutshell, your circadian rhythm helps create balance in your body for optimum functioning. When things are balanced and working properly, you'll sleep well and wake up when it's light and fall asleep when it's dark. As your body wakes up, it starts to produce the necessary hormones such as cortisol and serotonin to get your blood pressure up, raise your core body temperature, and get you mentally alert and physically ready to start the day. As the evening approaches and the sun sets, your body naturally starts to wind down and produces hormones such as melatonin and other neurotransmitters that allow your body to slow down, decrease blood pressure, and lower your core body temperature so you can eventually fall asleep. Sounds like a dream right? When was the last time your day went like that?

The problem is that many of us are not in sync with our natural circadian rhythm and this causes our internal functions to be completely discombobulated. This can cause many health problems like depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, PMS, insomnia and...yep, you guessed it-even weight gain.

What causes you to be out of sync with your own internal clock?

In order for you to best understand circadian rhythm and it's effect on your body, it's important to take a closer look into what makes your internal clock tick.

The study of circadian rhythm, also know as chronobiology, has been around since the 19th century. But it wasn't until Dr. Franz Halberg (a scientist from the University of Minnesota) discovered that blood count varied according to a strict rhythm throughout the day, that the study of circadian rhythm started to garner attention from the scientific and medical community. Many studies have been done since then to learn more about the effects it has on our body, including several key studies done in the 1980's. These studies placed people in isolated environments without any outside influences or cues, such as daylight and time. The studies revealed that human internal clock is actually longer than twenty four hours.

But if our internal clock is longer than 24 hours and our day is only 24 hours long-isn't it just a matter of time before we're all out of sync with our natural cycle?

No one really knows why our internal clock (without any external cues) is longer than twenty four hours...at least not yet. But fortunately, nature has natural "time markers" that keep our internal clocks in tune with the length of the day. In the field of chronobiology, these markers have been given the term zeitgebers, which is a German word that means "time givers". The most natural zeitgeber, of course, is the sun-but modern lifestyle has diminished it's importance and has instead shifted our reliance on other artificial cues such as your alarm clock, morning rituals, daily activities like meal times, working hours, and evening cues like going out and watching TV. All loosely regimented types of activities that have become habitual in nature.

But this is where many of us get into trouble...our modern life doesn't always allow for "regular" schedules. In fact, more and more we work longer hours, travel more, sleep less, eat at odd hours or even skip meals all together and...working out? Who has time for that?! (*wink*)

We are creatures of habit for a reason. Your body has it's own internal cycle and since that cycle is responsible for secreting hormones and neurotransmitters, you can imagine the havoc it creates on your body when your cycle gets out of whack. Your body loses it's bearings and doesn't know when to produce the right hormones or how much to produce. It's kind of like a sailboat being lost at sea-you're aimlessly floating whichever way the wind takes you...

But not all is lost.

Even though many of our hormones exhibit circadian effects, there's strong evidence that some can be produced and enhanced independent of time. Lucky for us the two most important hormones - testosterone and GH - that affect your body in terms of getting lean, tight and fit, are such hormones.

Let's take a look at these two hormones:

Testosterone is a male sex hormone, and hence is much more prevalent in men. But it is vital to building lean muscle for both men and women. Although testosterone has some circadian effects - some state that it's levels peak between 5:00-9:00 AM, while others state that it peaks between 3 and 11 hours after awakening. Testosterone can also be enhanced through high intensity training. No matter the time, high intensity exercises will always produce an influx of testosterone, allowing you to build more lean muscle - and that means more fat-burning too.

Growth Hormone (GH) is one of the most important hormones when it comes to your body transformation. It enhances protein synthesis which builds muscle and lipolysis which burns fat and it also helps inhibit glucose uptake which is a major contributor for gaining belly fat. Studies show that GH does not have strong circadian effects, but it does depend on getting enough sleep-in fact your GH is most effective during sleep! Depriving yourself of enough sleep is not only effecting your level of energy and general mental alertness the next day, it's also keeping you fat. Other than sleep, the most potent GH enhancer is exercise. And as with testosterone, the most effective type is short, high intensity exercise. Again, irrespective of time, if you're working out with high intensity, you're producing increased amounts of GH, enabling you to effectively burn fat MUCH faster than you can with isolated exercises or steady-state cardio.

In the end, the best solution to a healthy, lean, and fit body, is to come up with a regular schedule and stick to it. Keeping a regular schedule is far more important than being concerned with whether you workout in the morning or afternoon. Remember, your natural cycle is governed by a combination of circadian rhythm and habitual external cues (ie. zeitgebers) that form your daily life, so try your absolute best to:

• Eat at at regular times and keep your junk food (ie. refined sugar and other empty calories) intake to a minimum. Keep your diet healthy, well balanced, and consistent.


• Wake up and go to bed at consistent times and get enough sleep so you can maximize your body's fat burning hormones, amongst other important hormones and neurotransmitters to ensure optimum health.


• Workout regularly and at consistent times and include high intensity training into your fitness regimen. If you aren't familiar with high intensity workouts, check out my MAX Workouts program. The workouts are short, intense, and optimized to help your body elicit as much favorable fat burning and lean muscle building hormones as possible.

Shin Ohtake is the author of the world-famous fitness program, MAX Workouts. To learn more about how you can get ultra lean and toned with shorter workouts, visit http://www.MaxWorkouts.com

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