Chronotype & Athletic Performance

Perhaps you eat for your blood type & dress for your body type, but how about training for your chronotype? Chronotype refers to time of day where you perform your best. There are standardized questionnaires to assess chronotype, however you innately know if you’re a ‘morning person’, ‘evening person’ or somewhere in between. Performance is affected by not only by endogenous factors, but additionally multifarious exogenous, psychobiological, behavioral, etc. influences. Training at your preferred time lends itself to maximizing your training adaptation, which will ultimately benefit your overall performance. This time is also more likely to be in phase with your circadian rhythm. These corporal rhythms exist throughout physiological, biochemical and cellular processes and predictably result in diurnal variations in performance. As an example, a ‘morning person’ may have higher cortical excitability early in the day (Tamm et al., 2009) and an ‘evening person’ may reach a higher VO2max in the evenings (Hill et al., 1988). When it comes to competition, you should ideally prepare with training sessions at the same time as your event. If this doesn’t line up with your chronotype, mix your training times to include at least some sessions at the same time as your competition. Allow enough adaption time if indeed you need to shift your chronotype to be more aligned with your scheduled event.

Now may be an auspicious time to take advantage of a more flexible work/training day and get more out of your efforts by training when you’re uniquely physiologically & psychologically primed for it.