Question from H. Büttner, Nuremberg: I'm preparing for the Viking Tour in Norway with a training plan and wanted to know the following: When is the best time to train? In the morning before breakfast, around midday or in the afternoon? I usually train at the weekend after breakfast and during the week after work at around 3.30 pm. As I'm an early riser, I wanted to know whether there's anything wrong with doing a training session at 5.30am. I've done this several times before, cycling for around 60 minutes at high intensity. Perhaps you can give me a few general tips?
Expert advice: In principle, general performance follows the biological clock, i.e. there are phases of high and low performance. However, this mainly relates to mental abilities: In the morning right after getting up, you are still a little sluggish and after lunch as well. Not only is it harder to think, but it is also harder to motivate yourself to exercise - the cardiovascular system is geared towards waking up and digesting, not exercising. As a result, it takes a little while to adjust to the new demands.
However, it is not relevant for the training stimulus at what time of day you do your training. In principle, the human body is capable of delivering peak physical performance at any time of day or night if it is trained to do so (in terms of time). More important than the time is the nutrition that precedes it. If you train before breakfast, the body is forced to recruit the energy it needs more quickly from the body's own fat reserves, as the blood sugar level is relatively low in the morning. A training session before breakfast would therefore make perfect sense for training the fat metabolism. Ideally, however, it should not be intensive, but should mainly take place in the basic endurance range.
Photos: Corbis, Daniel Kraus
