Yesterday a friend asked me what’s the best time to exercise. He knew I had read a bunch of books on the topic so he thought I’d be able to advice him. And advise I did.
Exercise at the wrong time and you are easily at a disadvantage compared to couch potatoes who spend all the time in front of the wired box.
I am not talking about muscles that rip of out the shirts. A couple of months in the gym and you can get that too. I am talking about “energy levels”.
To explain things better, here’s a story about two friends: Me and another guy. The guy is a fitness freak. He goes jogging every night. He’s got chiseled abs. His biceps soar through the half-sleeves.
And me, I spend a lion’s share of my time reading books, watching internet marketing videos and blogging. And I have one giant ab (wish I could call it a muscle)
Yet he (the other guy) is low on energy levels most of the time. He often tells me how sleepy he feels at work. When he’s not exercising, he’s lazy.
But I, not to brag, feel quite alert through out the day. I can sweep through the daily activities with fairly good energy. My facial expressions don’t look like as if I am on anesthesia. And my voice tone is loud enough to cut through your ear drums (the other guy’s voice makes a gentle pass)
So I don’t want to have a perfect body, if perfect body means compromising on energy levels and alertness and mobility.
Yet this is what you get when you exercise vigorously at night. At least that’s what I have observed.
It’s all got to do with the quality of sleep you’re getting.
When you exercise, your body temperature rises, that’s why they call it “warming up”. But this rising temperature can be a problem.
There’s a reason why nature wants us to sleep at night. And there’s a reason why we prefer switching on the air conditioner before going to bed.
As the night approaches, our bodies favor a low temperature, as it prepares us to sleep. It’s been doing that for ages. Now all of a sudden you hop in your track suit and start jogging like crazy, your temperature shoots up while your biological mechanism is attempting to reduce the temperature scale a notch so you could sleep well. This internal battle has one result: Lack of good quality sleep.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what happens the next day when you haven’t had enough of good quality sleep. Yes, the next day at work, you feel lazy, tired, lethargic and what not.
So to cut the long story short, I said to my friend, the best time to exercise is definitely NOT at night. Do it the first thing in the morning and you’ll never complain about feeling lazy at times you don’t want to.
Or…. you’re on a uphill battle against the couch potatoes ;)
Osman.
P.S. Want to exercise during the day but too busy to go to gym? Check out ShapeShifter, a complete equipment-free bodyweight program you can follow anywhere.
