Peak Performance & Your Body Clock

So you set your alarm clock in the morning to go off before the roosters wake, attempting to get a good workout in before your day starts. And while many of us do it, is the morning really the best time to feel the burn? Our body clocks might be saying no.

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The late Thomas Reilly and his team at the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, at Liverpool John Moores University in England, discovered that people who worked out in the morning had lower maximum and sub-maximal heart rates. But their perception, of how hard they were working was the same in the morning as it was later in the day. It has also been noted that athletes and their world records were typically set in the late afternoon or evening time. Kinda makes you go hmm.

The study of Chronobiology {the biology of time} is a fairly new science founded by Dr. Franz Halberg, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. Chronobiology encourages us to listen to the internal tunes of our bodies for optimum health.

After conducting many tests, Chronobiologists discovered the following timetables for peak performance. See if you agree:

Peaking in the morning: Your sex hormones and alertness. Also, your sensitivity to allergens are said to be at a low.

Peaking at noon: Your body temperature. Also, your mood is at its best and your sight is the sharpest.

Peaking in the afternoon: Your flexibility, long-term memory and your manual dexterity.

Peaking in the early evening: According to some experts, this is the best time for working out but possibly the worst time for allergies.

Evening lowest peaking: Metabolism.

Midnight: This is potentially your most accident-prone time period.

Happy Thursday Friends!