When is the best time to workout? Morning? Afternoon? Evening? Let’s break it down to determine the best time to train and smash your goals.

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In the times of BC (that’s before children) it was so much easier to just crank out that workout sweat sesh after popping out of bed at the ripe old hour of like 10:00 a.m.

Maybe you preferred heading to a spin class after leaving the office. Or it was a weekend warrior type of schedule with a dedication to being active on your Saturdays and Sundays.

And then the kids came.

They sucked up all of your energy.

Those little evil halflings laughed in the face of your well-planned out fitness goals and dumped all over your schedule.

It can be tough to find the time to exercise, let alone follow along with what the magazines and blogs will tell you is the best time to workout.

It’s all good, my friend. Let me alleviate the concern.

In today’s article, we’re going to talk about the best time to workout and how to make that fit your schedule.

There are a few factors at play that will determine that best time of day for you, and we’ll get into them here so you can make a plan and execute.

Let’s get into it.

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The scientifically proven best time of day to workout

Alright let’s just go ahead and make this as easy as possible for you.

At the end of the day, it really does not matter when you work out. Seriously.

You can train in the morning after waking up to set the day and build momentum.

Or if you like sneaking away for a midday training session to hammer some bicep curls during lunchtime, that’s totally fine.

It can even be in the evening after a long day of work so you can let off some steam.

Seriously. It does not matter.

No matter the goal (weight loss, maintain, muscle gain), there is no specific time when you should workout that will maximize fat loss.

Remember, fat loss is, was and always will be driven by the amount of fork lifting reps you complete to your face hole.

In other words, control your calories and you’ll be able to control your weight.

The timing of your exercise programming has little to do with this equation of calories in versus calories out.

Now, when determining the best time of day to workout for you specifically, let’s break down a few factors that can help make things easier.

It all starts with your schedule

What does your day look like? Perform a time audit of every single waking minute of your weekday and weekends to figure out where you have some gaps in time to train.

Yes, you do have time to train. Everyone does.

I have two kids in a small Brooklyn apartment, one of them is home with me every single hour of the day while I run my online coaching business.

Despite these obstacles, I still find time to workout three to four times a week.

You’ve got to look at your schedule and really understand your priorities. If right now you want to spend more time on Instagram and Netflix, cool. Those are your priorities.

But don’t ever say you don’t have time to workout. Because there’s always room to do something, which is the next important factor in your determining the best time of day to workout for you.

Length of workouts

Look, a five minute workout is better than a no-minute workout.

While I’d like you to focus on training a little bit longer, sometimes that’s just not in the cards.

That’s why I’ve talked a lot about adapting to your current schedule with setups like Micro Workouts or by incorporating faster-paced options like Metabolic Resistance Training.

Both options can work wonders for hectic schedules.

With Micro Workouts, you’ll split up your lifting throughout the day and perform reps intermittently as a way to provide new stimulus amid strength principles.

This works well if you are an entrepreneur type or perhaps self-employed since traditional office settings might make it difficult or awkward to knock out a bunch of pull-ups or overhead dumbbell presses in between conference calls.

When you adopt the Metabolic Resistance Training approach, it’s a shortened yet more intense setup and provides the principles of strength/resistance training and cardio. Usually these workouts are faster paced and shorter on time (think more like 30 minutes tops).

If you do have more time to dedicate to your workout routine, awesome. Perhaps you’ve realized that there are some gaps in your schedule where you can make a more traditional strength training session work for you.

Of course the next big factor in figuring out the best time of day to workout is how many days you will dedicate to working out.

How often should you train?

Ideally, you should be spending some kind of time every single day prioritizing movement.

But, be careful here, because everyday should not be dedicated to a soul-crushing workout.

In fact, the majority of your movement should be of the lower-impact and lower-intensity variety.

If you’ve been reluctant to take a rest day, let me explain here why it is important to incorporate more rest days into your week.

And then take a couple of days per week to lift some heavy stuff, relative to your experience and abilities.

After that, you can add in one day where you push yourself a bit. It can be a sprint or a MetCon or your fun bootcamp or SoulCycle class or it can be just trying to crush some new PRs in the gym.

I keep things really minimal in my weekly schedule.

Here’s how it looks right now:

Monday: MetCon (15-20 minutes)

Tuesday: Upper Body (45-50 minutes)

Wednesday: Mobility (15-20 minutes)

Thursday: Lower Body (45-50 minutes)

Friday: Intervals (15 minutes)

Saturday: Play around with my kids and get tons of steps

Sunday: Mobility (15-20 minutes)

All together, I’m dedicating about 150 to 175 minutes exercise per week. That’s about two to three hours in total. That’s it.

The vast majority of your daily movement should be simply aiming to walk more throughout your day.

Walking boosts metabolism and burns calories without the rigors of traditional cardio on your feet, joints and back.

When you break things down like this, it’ll make things easier for you to stick to a routine and incorporate more movement into your schedule.

Of course, then you have to find something that you will actually enjoy and will commit to doing for the long term.

Sustainability

When are you most likely to stick to a workout program and do so consistently?

One of the tips I encourage my online coaching clients to adopt is to simply mark off a 20, 30 or even 60 minute window every single day and dedicate that time to your fitness habit.

Again, you do not need to fill a full hour with training intensely every single day.

Simply perform your workout for the allotted time of that routine, if you have extra time for additional skill work, flexibility, mediation, or even just relaxation, then awesome.

But if you’re an early riser and prefer to workout in the morning, you should work out in the morning if that’s when you’re most likely to stick to it.

When you’ve got kids in the house sucking your soul from your body harder than a Thanos snap of the Infinity Gauntlet, you might want to embrace the idea of winning your morning––I have a guide to winning the morning and why that’s super important for parents right here.

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur and need to crush the productivity bug in the morning, so it makes more sense for you to train around lunchtime. Perfect. 

Or perhaps you work shifts and you really like the idea of taking out your frustrations of the day on the weights at the end of the night, after work. Good. Stick with it.

Be consistent. Find the time you’d prefer to train and stick with it. That is the best time of day to workout. Period.

The bottomline on the best time of day to workout

When you start trying to game the system with finding little hacks like fasted training or you break your neck attempting to cram your schedule to fit in an hour-long session, you are only piling on more stress and simply focusing on the minuscule parts of the process.

Training matters. You should workout. You don’t have to spend endless hours doing so. And you don’t need to worry about when you workout.

If it’s before the rugrats awake from their slumber to terrorize your morning? Good.

If it’s during their afternoon nap while they’re doing more playing than sleep? Totally works.

If it’s at night after they’ve finally given up hope of staying up until midnight? Fantastic.

Find the time that works for you and your schedule.

Sure, we’re all creatures of habit and perhaps a regular schedule would be nice.

But, it’s all good if your training schedule looks more like a common core math problem.

Just get your workouts in whenever you can.

Let me help you figure out the best time to workout … 

Finding the right time and right workout plan can be incredibly overwhelming. But, I’m here to help you out.

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Best time to workout” and I’ll answer any questions you have about training.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post, maybe you’d like more knowledge bombs from me. I’d be honored if you join my mailing list to get regular updates every time I post something pretty dope.