Double Your Muscle Gains and Endurance By Training In The Afternoon

It's one of the age old questions from all of us - are we better off training in the morning or afternoon?

I've written about this before - and our trusty friend science has provided some more information around this topic.

Whilst the new study I'm about to bring you is not a 100% concrete final answer - it will give you plenty of thoughts to ponder during your next protein shake.

Muscle Growth: Is it Better to Workout in The Morning or Afternoon? 

In this research (1), 42 young men trained over a 24 week period and were put into 4 groups:

Group 1: Trained in the morning - endurance before strength (6:30am-10:00am)

Group 2: Trained in the morning - strength before endurance (6:30am-10:00am)

Group 3: Trained in the evening - endurance before strength (4:30pm -8:00pm)

Group 4: Trained in the evening - strength before endurance (4:30pm -8:00pm)

The workouts were the same with 2 per week in the first and 2-3 workouts per week in the second 12-week-period.

An extra session was added every fornight so subjects performed 5 training sessions in a 2-week period, to allow more progression despite the training adaptations.

The training session saw subjects do leg presses, leg extensions, and seated hamstring curls, lat pull downs, triceps push downs, biceps curls, military press, etc - these were good solid exercises.

The first 4 weeks saw the subjects train at 40-70% of their 1 rep max, then weeks 5-8 were subjects working in the range of 70-85% of their 1 rep max, followed by 4 weeks of 75-95% - a balance between strength and hypertrophy training. This similiar program was then carried out again but with "slightly higher intensities" to make up the 24 weeks.

The cardio workouts performed weekely consisted of a blend between interval and continuous cycling.

They averaged from 30-50 minutes, with the intervals consisting of 85-100% of HRmax for 4x4minutes with 4 minutes active rest, and continuous being 65-80% of HRmax.

So what did they find? 

Strength Gains 

• 1RM gains were very similar in the morning (14-19%) and evening (18-24%)

Muscle Growth 

• Muscle growth increased in all groups by week 24 (12-20%) BUT during the training weeks of 13-24 the evening groups gained MORE muscle

Time to Exhaustion: 

• Increased in all groups in the morning (16-28%) and evening (18-27%) with the study information suggesting an advantage of doing cardio before weights at 12 and 24 weeks.

I spoke about the testosterone cortisol ratio last time I wrote about this topic (link at the top of the page) and here it remained unaltered by training order or time of the day, and may not be as important to potential muscle gains as we used to think.

Cardio or Weights First for Optimal Muscle Gains?

This is another question this study puts forward.

Because of the nature of these untrained subjects, it's difficult to make any concrete decisions. 

We saw with this research that when a subject trained it only became relevant as the study went on - in the final 12 weeks.

We need more focused studies into trained individuals before we can say anything for sure!

But what we did learn was that cardio first may be better to increase endurance, afternoon training may be better for muscle growth and slighty better (but not statistically significant) for strength. But most importantly, we learnt nothing is concrete here and it may be better off doing whatever you FEEL is better.

I mean, I used to think training in the morning was impossible.......until I tried it. 

In fact, I really love it, and I've had some of my best workouts then. 

When Is The Best Time To Train And Workout?

This is still not set in stone, but there will be better studies to come out soon. If you're going to chose one of them, then chose it and stick to it.

While this research tells us PM training was superior here, it really comes down to what you feel like is better for your lifestyle!

Reference

(1) Küüsmaa, Maria, et al. "Effects of morning vs. evening combined strength and endurance training on physical performance, muscle hypertrophy and serum hormone concentrations." Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism ja (2016).