When is the best time to work out? (article)

[Arch0wl]

http://bayesianbodybuilding.com/best-time-to-work-out/

tl;dr: 6-12 hours after you wake up. So if you wake up at 8am, it'd be 2pm - 8pm. If you wake up at noon, it'd be 6pm - midnight. And so on.

[Reach]

Well yeah, anyone that lifts seriously in the morning must have noticed by now that you're significantly weaker in the morning. Maybe this affects morning people less than people that are nightowls, but as a nightowl I need to be awake for a few hours before I reach my maximum strength potential.

[kmay]

i actually already did this x.x

but mostly because after 4 hours of relaxing i feel like i need to get my ass in gear lol

[Kraezymann]

Actually I was hoping a timing thread would come up. I have an interesting work schedule and was wondering if someone could help me build a workout schedule around it?

I work three days a week, 12 hours a day. I get full time pay and everything, so a four day weekend is nice. But I never thought that going to the gym 4 days on/3 days off. After 4 weeks on a particular shift, it switches to a different three days of work.

My question is two fold: is it a good idea to have a three day rest from the gym if I want to start doing a proper weekly routine? And when would it be best to go if I'm working for 12 hours?

[Arch0wl]

@kraezymann PM me (or post here) a sample work schedule and we'll work something out.

I don't think you should have more than two days of rest in a row. After day two your body will recover from pretty much any level of workout intensity, unless it's ridiculously high volume (like, 15 sets of 10 or something)

[Kraezymann]

I'll post it here too incase anyone can come up with anything we might miss :)

For the next 5 weeks it goes like so:

Monday to Wednesday - work
Thursday to Sunday - off

In the middle of March it switches:
Thursday to Saturday - work
Sunday to Wednesday - off

Then, after 4 weeks of the above:
Tuesday to Thursday - work
Friday to Monday - off

My issue is less about switching days around, it's the structuring around a 7am to 7pm shift, and then figuring out what days to go

[Arch0wl]

In your case the most pertinent thing is the hours of your gym, but most gyms close at minimum 9PM. Since you're working 7am to 7pm the best time would be *immediately* after you get off work -- if you wake up an hour or so before work, you'd still be within the 6 hour - 12 hour time window by a small margin.

On your off days, you could go 8 hours into your day and that'd be good.

So if you have

M

TU

W

TH (off)

F (off)

SA (off)

SU (off)

you might want to do this, keeping in mind (off) means a day off work, not off of your workout:

M

TU: workout

W

TH (off): workout

F (off)

SA (off): workout

SU (off)

for March:

M (off)

TU (off): workout

W (off)

TH: workout (take advantage of the two rest days and do like 3 more sets of everything you would normally do, so if you're doing 4 sets, bump this up to 7)

F:

SA

SU (off): workout

then

M (off)

TU: workout (again, take advantage of high volume, since you'll have two rest days after this)

W

TH

F (off): workout

SA (off)

SU (off): workout

[kmay]

could you do push-ups and other calisthenics on your days off? it keeps your muscles there still in rebuilding mode...

[Arch0wl]

they won't do much for your muscle maintenance. pushups tend to be like 30 reps or more, which is hardly going to produce the anabolic response that lifting heavy will.

if you want to do them, sure, but your rest days should ideally be used for recovery. though, some people do conditioning on their rest days, so it's your call.

for calisthenics, it depends. if you can do only like, 4-10 reps of a particular exercise, then yeah that'd help, but again, your rest days should be used for rest given the volume you'd be doing on a workout day. if your rest days are enough to get extra exercise in, you probably aren't doing enough volume on your workout days.

[kmay]

well its for him, the 3 days off thing. just a slight stimuli will be enough to not have them fully recover.


but you're right depends on his fitness level there. push-ups kill me because i'm weak as hell and heavy as sin :p

[Arch0wl]

even if it's to keep you from fully recovering, that's not the kind of lack of recovery that will produce significant gains. unless you strap a shit ton of weights on you, pushups aren't going to be heavy enough to make your anabolic response very great.

[kmay]

" After day two your body will recover from pretty much any level of workout intensity"


its just to keep him muscles not fully recovered so when he does get to the gym after the third day the fibers will still be repairing.

[Kraezymann]

Wow that's actually quite similar to what I was thinking of doing. Bonus: my gym is open 24 hours except for Sundays.

I am definitely going to try this out next week. I'm a LITTLE concerned about being too tired on that first Tuesday after work but I'm just gonna do it.

Thanks for your help guys, I'll let you know how it's going next week

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by kmay

" After day two your body will recover from pretty much any level of workout intensity"


its just to keep him muscles not fully recovered so when he does get to the gym after the third day the fibers will still be repairing.

okay, let me put it this way

whatever benefit you gain from doing this will be negligible

if you want to have three rest days in a row, the best strategy is to go EXTREMELY high volume the day before your three-in-a-row rest days.

if you normally go on - off - on - off, take the volume of an "on" day and triple it for the day where you'll have three rest days in a row. so if you do 3 sets on your "on", day, do 9 sets on the day where you'll have three rest days afterward. if you're altering a workout where you normally have 2 rest days afterward, do 1.5x the volume when you have 3 rest days afterward; so if you have 10 sets on a day where you have 2 rest days following that, do 15 sets when you have 3 rest days following that.