What’s the right time to do a cardio workout? Read on to find out how to get the maximum benefit for the best results.
If you’re working out and trying to improve your health and fitness it makes sense that you’d want to do whatever you could to get better results.
After all, you’re trying to look better, feel better and move better right and if there’s a way to get there faster, surely you’d want to know? Well here’s the thing, you’re not alone. Each day gym-goers all over the world try to get an edge in their cardio workouts and one way in which they do that is by trying to find the right time to exercise.
Whether it’s early morning before the day truly starts or late afternoon after a long day at work, these gym-goers are constantly trying to find the best way to optimize their results and improve their results.
Well here’s the good news. If that’s you, and you’ve been agonizing over the right time to complete your cardio session, you’re in luck, because we’re going to break down everything you need to know about session timing.
Whether it’s early morning before the day truly starts or late afternoon after a long day at work, these gym-goers are constantly trying to find the best way to optimize their results and improve their results.
Well here’s the good news. If that’s you, and you’ve been agonizing over the right time to complete your cardio session, you’re in luck, because we’re going to break down everything you need to know about session timing.
How Much Cardio Should I Do?
Before we get into when you should train, we should take a look at how much you should train.
According to the CDC, adults need to perform 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week, and for best results that should include both cardio-based activities and muscle-strengthening activities.
That breaks down to 30 minutes, 5 times a week, although you can spread this out more if you wish.
Once you’ve decided on your days, figuring out how much cardio you actually do is dependent on your current levels of fitness, how often you can exercise, and your overall goals.
If your goals are to improve your aerobic ability and endurance, then you’ll want to make sure that the majority of your time working out is spent doing cardio. Whether that’s running, cycling or rowing, these activities should take precedent over any resistance-based training.
However, if your goal was to simply be in good general health then you may want to keep an even split, between cardio and resistance training, to help you feel strong, and aerobically fit at the same time.
Finally, if your goals were to build muscle, you should limit your cardio sessions to a few, low-intensity, fat-burning sessions a week, and the majority of your time should be spent lifting weights.
Whatever your goals are, it is important to spend some time lifting weights, to help you maintain muscle mass, which will help you have a better-looking physique.
Cardio in the Morning
Many people love to do cardio first thing in the morning to boost their fat loss efforts. This is because they believe that after sleeping 7-8 hours, their metabolism is primed to burn fat, and exercising first thing, on an empty stomach, will help them burn fat at an accelerated rate as the body needs fuel, which is why it turns to your fat stores.
Some people also find early morning workouts a great way to start the day as they find it much easier to do cardio instead of trying to lift weights, which can be dangerous if you’re not fully alert.
Many people report that they feel invigorated because of the endorphins which are released after a fun cardio session and that they also feel more awake, alert, and ready to tackle the day ahead.
In our experience, early morning cardio sessions can be a great way to wake yourself up and feel ready for the day, especially a high-intensity session, such as HIIT or Spin, as it gives you a great feeling of accomplishment to have achieved something difficult so early in the morning.
Cardio in the Evening
For most people, evening cardio sessions are more convenient after a long day at work. Not only can it be easier to fit an evening session into your day, but it can also be a great way to de-stress, relax, and burn off any emotion from your day.
Many people also report that a challenging cardio workout in the evening helps to tire them out, which makes it far easier to fall asleep and get a good night's rest and that it helps them to feel more productive, instead of just sitting in front of the TV for the night.
In our experience, evening workouts come with a host of benefits and they can be much easier to fit into your day, which makes it much easier to be consistent, as you’re not reliant on waking up to an early alarm.
Other Factors that Impact your Choice
It’s worth noting that to get the maximum impact from your workouts, everything else should be dialed in too.
You won’t enjoy any extra fat-burning potential from your early morning run, if you eat over your calories throughout the day.
Equally, your evening session on the spin bike could be a great way to tire you out, but it won’t have the same impact if you get home and lounge around in front of the TV until midnight.
So while looking for any gains you can is the right thing to do, just make sure you’re not letting yourself down somewhere else. Timing your workouts correctly, and exercising in a way that you enjoy and benefit from is great, but only if you’re doing the right things outside of your sessions too.
Final Thoughts
Early morning workouts could be a great way to train and wake up before the day ahead and could also help with your efforts to burn fat, if that’s a goal of yours.
Whereas late-night training sessions could be super effective in helping you to de-stress and feel more content before bed, even helping you to fall asleep faster and get a more restful night, which is a huge benefit whatever your goals are.
But ultimately the decision is down to you because if you’re not happy in your session then none of it matters.
Waking up early morning, if you usually hit snooze 6 times before getting up, probably isn’t going to help you feel great if all you can think about is going back to bed.
And training late at night, after work, dinner, and putting the kids to bed, may sound like a nice idea until you actually try it and realize you’re crawling into bed 90 minutes later the usual.
Which is why our advice is that you focus on finding a time to train that you enjoy.
Once you’ve done that you should concentrate on everything else in your life to make sure you’re getting maximum benefit, which includes trying to get over 7 hours of restful sleep a night and eating in a way that supports your goals, and remaining consistent.
As a result, you’ll begin to make progress faster than ever before, and the best thing is, you’ll be doing it on your own schedule.
