Ideal Time to Train

In some of my reading today I came across a few articles looking at sleep quality and quantity in athletes who, surprisingly enough, tend to actually have worse sleep than non-athletes. This leads to a lot of speculation as to why and reasons vary from excess physical stress on the body, practice times, and the chronotypes of the athletes. A chronotype is basically a science-y way of talking about if you’re an early bird or a night owl by choice. Although it might not seem significant, this preference actually has physiological repercussions, and I feel like it is an important thing to talk about for anyone trying to achieve something challenging, intensive, or complex.

As the names might suggest, an early bird is someone who tends to wake up (by choice) early in the morning and goes to bed early at night, whereas night owls would go to sleep at 2 am and sleep until noon (think every teenager ever). There is a third option where neither early or late is preferred, so more neutral. None of these are good or bad, it's just the way people’s natural internal clock works, but there is a bias with the way our world works towards the early birds (9-5 job, 7:30 - 3 school, etc). 

Now while knowing your chronotype might not make getting up for work any easier, it can provide some valuable insight as to when you should be looking to train during the day. Your chronotype will tell you when your body and brain will be most active and ready to take on challenging tasks. So if you are an early bird, training in the morning might be ideal for you rather than the evening when your body is naturally starting to think about bed. Vice versa for you owls. And this does not have to apply just to training. This could apply to a big project you’re working on or a test you are studying for. Save your studying for the evening if you’re an owl and sleep in a little bit the next day. For the early bird, go to bed earlier the night before and get an extra hour or two of work done in the morning before the day starts.