What are the benefits of morning workouts?

The benefits of physical activity on health are now widespread and well-known. While any type of physical activity when done frequently enough (150min/week) and challenging enough (moderate-moderately high intensity) can significantly reduce the risk of chronic diseases and chronic musculoskeletal injuries, each mode of physical activity can provide specific benefits to the trainee.

In that regard, morning workouts can also provide specific benefits that you wouldn’t find from evening workouts, but these benefits require specific catering in the exercise program. In this article, we reveal some distinctive benefits of morning workouts and provide recommendations to get the best out of them.

Benefits of morning workouts

As mentioned, any workout performed any time of the day can provide the general health benefits of physical activity as long as it’s performed consistently and with gradual progressive increase in its parameters (intensity, time, volume, frequency). What distinguishes morning workouts however is their general influence over productivity levels and mental health.

Improved Mood

Several studies have showed that exercising in the morning can elevate mood levels through the release of endorphins, which are chemical messengers responsible for elevating your mood. This mood elevation is experienced directly after a workout, and is what’s referred to as a “runner’s high” which is experienced specifically after running.

Improved productivity

The elevated mood due to exercise can translate into a higher work performance as reported by office workers who performed morning workouts. However, to achieve the target goal of improving productivity, the exercise program has to be tailored specifically to avoid burnout and excessive fatigue (check here for detailed exercise recommendations). A scientific study published in The International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity showed that as little as walking for 30 minutes on the treadmill can improve the levels of energy and vigor needed for a six hour seated work (office or computer work).

Improved Sleep

Working out in the morning has been shown to improve sleep habits, and that’s mainly due to the imposed commitment of waking up earlier to work out which encourages you to sleep earlier, and because intense workouts in the evening can leave your heart rate elevated and your fight or flight systems activated which may delay sleep time in some individuals.

Improved mental wellbeing

The act of waking up earlier by itself can improve your self esteem and allow you to feel more fulfilled and in control over your daily life. Add to that working on your physical health and wellbeing, and you will feel invincible going through your day knowing that you already satisfied your body’s need of exercise. This process has been documented in scientific literature where morning and evening training were compared, and morning training showed elevated levels of self esteem and time-management abilities.

How to get the best out of your morning workout?

These significant improvements require specific programming to ensure their gain. In a previous article, we detailed how to program the most efficient morning workouts to ensure improved productivity without burning out and feeling sleepy during the day.

To ensure your application of all scientific guidelines pertaining to effective morning workouts, we created an online training platform, our WellFit Virtual Club. We created the perfect 30-minutes online workouts that improve your health and fitness levels as well as your productivity throughout the day.

We designed three different types of classes that we believe can address all audiences:

1. Day Booster Workout: this workout is designed to get you in the right mood to conquer your workday. With the proper and careful selection of music and exercise sequence, our day booster workout will warm up your joints and muscles with light intensity exercises before gradually increasing the intensity to elevate your heart rate. It also wakes your whole body and mind up and energizes you for a highly productive and satisfying day without leaving you drained and energy-depleted.
2. Light Wellness Workout: this workout is tailored to get your joints moving freely and your muscles strong for your daily challenges. The light-wellness workout is a sweat-free workout that doesn’t need any equipment, and it channels your energy towards a productive workday. This workout is especially efficient for people with little to no exercise history who spend most of their day inactive and want to engage in light-intensity activities.
3. Yoga Sessions: this session is for those who want to exercise the body and the mind in a stress-free, relaxing environment. Practicing yoga is proven to improve flexibility, balance, and muscle endurance and strength needed for performing daily tasks, and it can also alleviate musculoskeletal pain and discomfort.

If you are already exercising, you can still benefit from these workouts to improve your mood, motivation, and focus throughout the day without having to change anything to your current training program, since the workouts provided by the WellFit Virtual Club are maintained within a level of intensity that won’t require recovery on your own.

Advantages of the WellFit Virtual CLub

The WellFit Virtual Club has been designed with the user experience as a priority, with several aspects taken into consideration. To mention few of them:

1. We created the platform with morning people and corporate workers in mind: the sessions are provided in the morning and tailored around giving you the best workout that will improve your health and fitness while boosting your productivity for the day.
2. The fees are more affordable than ANY other training option that exists: we made sure that the memberships are competitive with regular gym memberships, class memberships, and hiring any fitness professional.
3. Despite our competitive prices, you will get the best return on investment by having the supervision of our qualified instructors and an engaging audiovisual experience. If you choose to turn your webcam on, our instructors can provide you feedback on your exercise form to ensure that you get the best out of our workouts.

HOW TO JOIN WELLFIT VIRTUAL CLUB

To provide you with an easy and a user-friendly experience, we collaborated with IN2 app, available on the Play Store and App Store for free, to provide our workouts. You can book your monthly membership here and access our online sessions which will be provided on Zoom through the app and enjoy a successful morning workout given by our qualified group instructors, that will boost your mind and body throughout the day!