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Your body anticipates your workout
After two early workouts, the next morning feels easier to start, and it looks like a change in willpower. What changed is the cortisol entrainment mechanisms. The suprachiasmatic nucleus clocks everything a person does all day.
Meals show the same thing. Picture breakfast at nine, lunch at twelve, a snack at three, and dinner at six thirty: the body sends a food anticipatory signal, and ghrelin is secreted to make a person hungry.
Exercise works the same way. In the fifteen minutes before a regular workout, a person starts stirring around with more energy. Part of it is cognitive, and a lot of it is the brain anticipating that exercise is coming.
How does the body anticipate mealtimes?
In a 2001 study in Diabetes, David Cummings and colleagues measured the hunger hormone ghrelin in volunteers who ate on a regular schedule. Ghrelin rose sharply before each customary meal and fell after eating. The rise happened even when the volunteers had no clock to tell them the time. The result showed that the body prepares for meals ahead of time.
Do organs keep their own clocks?
Nearly every organ has a clock of its own. In a 2000 study in Genes and Development, Francesca Damiola and colleagues restricted mice to feeding in the daytime. Clocks in the liver shifted to follow mealtimes, while the master clock in the brain stayed on light-dark cycles. The experiment showed that food can reset organ clocks separately from light.
Does time of day change physical performance?
Body temperature rises through the day and peaks in the late afternoon or early evening. Muscle strength, reaction time, and flexibility tend to follow a similar pattern in laboratory studies. Elite athletes' records are more often set in the late afternoon or evening. The pattern holds even in people who rise early.
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