The Morning Man vs. The Night Queen

**Disclaimer: Neither Starkey nor I am an expert in sleep patterns, sports medicine, sports psychology, or marriage. Our go-to method is “trial by fire”.

Here at SoCal Vocal Experience, we are real people. Real people that have strong opinions about sleep.

Let’s start with this question: Is working out in the morning or evening better?

Starkey is your textbook “Morning Person” go-getter. The alarm goes off and he is out of bed, dressed, and on the way to his typical morning workout that starts anywhere between 4:15 am and 5:45 am depending on the day and the class. This sounds completely normal to a lot of people. To me, this is the middle of the night.

LOOK AT THIS LUNATIC AT 5 SOMETHING IN THE MORNING

My ideal workout is going running at 9 pm with a headlamp on a dirt trail, hitting the gym at 10 pm when it’s close to empty, or a candlelight yin yoga class that starts in the late evening. Typically, my workouts take place after work. Whether it’s in my home gym or a run through the neighborhood, the key to a good workout for me is at the end of a full day of work. This makes marathon training and morning races challenging but that’s another story for another day.

It is not a secret that I despise mornings. I would happily sleep late every day and do all my work and workouts after the sun goes down. Starkey’s opinion on this is that it’s “wasting the day”. Maybe he’s right? Maybe he just doesn’t understand that large creative brains (and egos) need time to rest and recoup after a full day of being awesome.

There two moments every day that help us exercise our self-restraint from shoving a sock in the other’s mouth. Each morning when Starkey gets home from his morning torture session at the gym, I am forcefully ripping myself out of bed and grunting at the coffee maker to brew faster and he is a bouncing ball of radiant energy. You could power a small city with the amount of energy shining out of his pores. If the rest of the world had even a fraction of the positive energy that Starkey emits, the world would be a much better place. However, It is this moment that I test to see if I’m actually force sensitive and attempt to Darth Vader force choke him. Instead, I gently remind him that it will take me another four cups of coffee to get on his level. This is when he kisses my forehead and goes about his business. In the evening, after I am finished with my epic sweat sesh, I am like a powered-up pinball bouncing off the walls and talking faster than any living being can understand. I MUST tell Starkey every single thing I have thought that day, the wild ideas I have for podcasts or books I am going to write, or the next greatest kitchen concoction I’m dreaming of creating. Meanwhile, he has already started winding down and there is a moment where I can read in his eyes that he is mentally cutting my vocal cords so I can’t speak. Nine times out of ten, this doesn’t stop me from getting in a few more thoughts before he gently reminds me that he will never be on my wavelength. I start bouncing off in a different direction and tell the dogs stuff instead. They are phenomenal listeners.

Caffeine helps me morning like Starkey.

So, which way is right? Or better? Or better for you? I’m sure I could google “morning workouts vs night workouts” and get tons of articles written by experts that say we are both right and wrong at the same time.

Using the “trial by fire” method to figure out which one is better has lead us to this conclusion: as long as we both get the required number of hours we need of sleep, we get our workouts done, we are properly nourished, and we enjoy the time we spend together, then we are doing everything right for us.

Finding a routine that works for you is essential for success in anything you do, especially being active. Try the morning, see how you feel. Try the evening and see if that’s better or worse. Maybe you’re a lunch workout or an afternoon yoga person. You don’t know until you carve out that time in your day for your active routine. Once you figure out the best time for YOU to be active, then that is the right answer.