Is aerobic exercise more suitable in the morning or in the afternoon?

There is no absolute "morning is better" or "afternoon is better" for aerobic exercise. The most suitable time for you depends entirely on your work and rest habits, physical foundation and exercise goals.

When I was preparing for the half-marathon last year, the coach on the team did not give us a uniform training time at all. He first came up with a record sheet and asked us to try running in the morning for one week and running in the afternoon for one week. We should write down the resting heart rate, pace, fatigue after running, and work status of the day, and make our own choices after two weeks. There were more than 20 people in the team at that time, and they all chose everything: the eldest brother who could run 330 meters in the marathon was determined to run at 5 o'clock in the morning. He said that after the run, he would go home to have breakfast and send his children to school without any delay. It was very comfortable to run in the early morning wind. ； Several of us young people who had just started working unanimously chose 6 p.m., saying that we couldn't get up at all in the morning. We had to get up and run for half the morning, yawning at the workstation, and our keyboard hands were weak.

Of course, if you take a closer look at scientific research data, there are indeed many studies on exercise physiology that point out that 4 to 6 pm is the golden period of human body function: core body temperature is 1-2°C higher than in the morning, muscle viscosity is much lower, joint flexibility is good, and the peak of cardiopulmonary function also falls within this range. Simply put, your body is "active". It is similar to how it takes a long time to turn on a mobile phone, and everything that needs to be loaded in the background is loaded, making it run very smoothly. With the same exercise intensity, the risk of injury is lower when practicing in the afternoon. If you want to hit the pace and brush up on PB, it is indeed easier to achieve results during this time period. My last personal best time for running a 5-kilometer was set in Ossen at about 5 pm last fall. It was 1 minute and 40 seconds faster than my fastest record in the morning. When I ran, my legs felt less heavy and my breathing went smoothly. There was no heaviness like that of "your body is not yet fully awake" when you ran in the morning.

But this doesn’t mean that you can’t exercise in the morning. “Fasted aerobics”, which has been popular in fitness circles for several years, is a typical morning exercise favorite. When you wake up in the morning without eating, your glycogen reserves are low, and the energy supply ratio from fat can be 20%-30% higher than during exercise after meals. Many people who want to lose body fat choose this time. My friend whose body fat dropped from 24 to 18 in three months just woke up every morning and climbed stairs for 40 minutes on an empty stomach, and the effect was indeed visible to the naked eye. But there has always been controversy here. Another group of fitness bloggers always say that although exercising on an empty stomach in the morning burns more fat, it is also easy to lose muscle, and the extra calories you burn can be fully replenished by drinking half a cup of milk tea in the afternoon. It is not that exciting at all. Not to mention people with high blood pressure and hypoglycemia. Their sympathetic nerves are already excited in the morning and their blood pressure is at a high level throughout the day. If they move suddenly, they may be in danger. Doctors generally do not recommend that these people do strenuous aerobics in the morning.

After all, in fact, most people struggle with this issue, not because of their sports performance at all, but because they want to ask "when should I move to persevere?" After all, if you are an office worker who has to catch the subway at 7:30 every morning, you cannot get up at 5 a.m. for a morning run and give up after three days. Instead, it is better to walk around the neighborhood for half an hour after get off work, or go to the gym to ride on the elliptical machine for 40 minutes. I once had a colleague who originally wanted to go for a morning jog with me, but after three days he couldn't get up. Later, he changed it to walking downstairs for 20 minutes after lunch every day. He persisted for half a year, and his waist circumference was reduced by two centimeters. Is it no better than running in the morning for three days of fishing and two days of drying nets?

Really, there is no need to dwell on such minutiae for too long. The core of aerobic exercise is never "when to do it", but "are you doing it?" Even if the time you choose does not match the golden period of scientific research, as long as you persist for a long time, the effect will definitely be much better than if you struggle back and forth and remain motionless. If you really can't make up your mind, just follow what my previous coach said and try each for a week on your own. The body's feelings will be more accurate than any research data.