By: Chris Gates
It’s hard to train in the morning.
If you’re one of those superhuman folks who can roll out of bed and right into a workout, congrats! You’ve done it. You’ve achieved something the rest of us want to stay far, far away from.
Because facts are facts, and the overwhelming majority of people just aren’t interested in getting up extra early each day to train.
For most of us, lunch time or some time in the afternoon or evening is the best window of opportunity to get a workout in. It’s easier to summon the energy and enthusiasm to train, and most of the time your body just feels better later in the day than it does first thing in the morning.
You know that stiff feeling you have sometimes when you roll out of bed? It can take a while to wear off.
But nevertheless, training in the morning is sometimes unavoidable. Perhaps you have an occasional day with back-to-back-to-back meetings in the afternoon, or maybe after work you put a priority on family time in the evenings, so your only option is to work out first thing.
It could even be that your schedule has changed and you need to make a permanent switch.
Whatever the case, we can put a game plan in place to make your morning training as successful and enjoyable as possible. Let’s dive into what some of the research tells us about morning training and then use it as our guide for setting up a successful routine.
Research Evidence
Most of the available research on this topic suggests that your results from training in the morning will be partially dependent on the style of training you prefer. And we can break that down into two groups to simplify this discussion:
- Strength Training
- Volume/Endurance Training
Strength Training
We know that, on average, long-term strength and muscle gains are largely unaffected by having to train in the morning (or any time of day, really). So if you’re worried that switching up your training time is going to impede progress, take a deep breath.
If your only option is to train first thing in the morning on a consistent basis, it’s going to be OK. Your body will adjust, and your progress will be just like training at any other time of the day — it will be relative to each training session over time.
Potential negative outcomes surface for those sessions that happen only once in a while. Maybe it’s that one day of the week you have to train early, or the day where meetings on top of meetings leave you with only one option: early-AM training.
In that scenario, training in the morning (within the first two hours of waking up), is likely to negatively impact your performance if you participate in strength training.
Volume/Endurance Training
If your training style is geared more toward building muscle (higher volume) or endurance, performance may not be affected as much. That is, unless you just absolutely hate training in the morning, have a bad attitude, and mope your way through the entire workout — for this style of training it seems like mood plays a big role, as it can make the perception of a workout feel more difficult.
Accumulating training volume, or doing long workouts focused on endurance (like running) with high energy needs, could also potentially see performance declines with the switch to morning training. This is due in part to an extended period of time without calories, and/or potentially training on an empty stomach to start the day.
But similar to strength training, these negative effects are more noticeable when your workout timing changes on a rare occurrence. If it’s a long-term change, you shouldn’t see any kind of performance disruptions aside from the initial transition to a new training time.
So to summarize, research suggests morning training is just like any other training — if you do it all the time, you’ll be able to make progress. However, if you prefer to train in the afternoon or evening and are forced to train occasionally in the morning, you may see a dip in strength performance, and potentially your ability to accumulate volume as well.
Coaching Cues
I can speak from some experience on this topic.
Work-related matters have caused my training time to change over the years. For a while I had a job that started at Noon, so I trained around 10 a.m. every day. Then things switched up and I moved to a more traditional 8:30 a.m. start time for work, so I trained over my lunch break. And throughout my professional career there have obviously been days and weeks here and there where training got tricky. Meetings, scheduling changes, and high-priority items always cause workouts to move around.
Let’s break down how to handle both scenarios — permanent morning training, and occasional morning training.
Permanent Morning Training
With any of this stuff, consistency is going to be your best friend. No matter the work-related scenario for me, the initial change was difficult. There’s no getting past it. When you normally train at noon and then you have to randomly show up to the gym at 7 a.m., things are going to feel off.
But simply continuing to show up and hit your workouts each day will eventually bring things back to baseline. You can’t expect your mind and/or your body to immediately switch over to this new routine and continue to hit all of your numbers (sets, reps, weight, etc.). Or if you’re an endurance athlete, you can’t expect that your times or endurance are going to seamlessly make the switch, too.
There’s going to be an adjustment period. Your best bet is to accept that, plan for it, and move on. Maybe scale things back in your program to account for the change. If you’re lifting first thing in the morning now, scale back some of the training volume. If your goals are specifically to build strength, knock 10% off the load for your training block and recalibrate. And if your goals are endurance-based, perhaps knock some mileage or duration off of those first few workouts in order to feel your way through the new routine.
We don’t need to overcomplicate things. Taking one step back now to take two steps forward in the future is a perfectly reasonable and sound approach.
Occasional Morning Training
If the change in your training schedule is just for one day, or something that happens on occasion but isn’t part of the regular routine, you can still have a training program that is effective.
Think of each workout during each week as a puzzle piece. Each piece needs to fit together in order to complete the entire routine, but the order in which you piece them together can have some flexibility.
If you have a day where you know you’re going to have to train first thing in the morning, plan accordingly. Research tells us that performance may be impacted, so account for that. Instead of planning a max day, or something with very high intensity on long duration, swap in something lower intensity that you’re confident you can complete. Move that high intensity day to a different day of the week where you can complete it at your normal training time.
Shift your focus for that morning session to something that’s lower in volume, or lighter in load, or shorter/less intense for endurance training. You’ll be setting yourself up for success, and promoting better performance in the workouts that require a higher level of effort elsewhere in the week.
Move the puzzle pieces around, do it in a way that makes sense, and keep moving forward.
—
Thanks for reading! I hope you found this article helpful. If you’re interested in online fitness coaching to receive guidance on how to put together a program that works and make the right adjustments along the way to reach your goals, please check out my coaching page and feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss more.
CGF