The right time for training

26. April 2022

Foto: iStock.com/torwai

When is the best time to train? In the morning before breakfast, around noon or rather in the afternoon? 

Basically, overall performance follows the biological clock, which means there are phases of high performance and phases of low performance. However, this mainly relates to mental abilities: you’re still a bit sluggish after you get up in the morning, and after lunch too. It’s not only harder to think, but also motivate yourself to train – the cardiovascular system is set to wake up or digest and not do sports activities. As a result, it takes a short while to adapt to the new requirement.

When it comes to the training stimulus, however, it is irrelevant at which time of day you do your training. In principle, the human body has the ability to perform at its best at any time of the day or night if it is (temporally) trained to do so. Your nutrition beforehand is more important than the timing. If you train before breakfast, your body is forced to draw the required energy from your body's fat reserves more quickly, since your blood sugar level is relatively low in the morning. A training unit before breakfast therefore makes sense for training your lipid metabolism. Ideally, this unit should not be intensive, but predominantly lie in the basic endurance zone.