Recovering from evening workouts

Training
1

I had to shift my workouts to the evenings lately and am usually working out from 8:30 to 9 (typically only 3 times/week). I take a cold shower afterwards and go to bed around 10. I have no problems falling asleep and sleep my usual ~8 hours. Every single time, I’m extremely tired the next day. I don’t have this issue with weight training.
Any ideas how to address this?

2

I do most of my trainer work in the evening. I like to do it as early as possible so my brain can mentally wind down before going to bed. It seems to work for me.

3

I do workouts in the morning… I’m fading mid day. I do workouts after work and I’m tired the next morning. Either way I’m tired. Don’t think there’s anything you can really do about it.

4

I used to work out right after getting up and didn’t have any issues. If anything I had now energy on workout days.
Guess I’ll just have to stick it up and live with it…

5

I’m on a similar schedule and IME tweaking my nutrition had a big positive effect on how I felt the next morning. Given you’re not eating for 8+ hours after a workout which already poses a few challenges to recovery, it’s easy to wake up pretty glycogen depleted which always feels a bit ‘meh.’ (Strength training might have less effect as your calorie burn is generally lower.)

I’m no nutrition professional so I’ll refrain from giving specific advice, but a few things that worked for me are;

  • Takes a bit of experimentation as some people struggle eating right before bed, but I’d try to get some decent calories in right after- particularly slower release proteins like casein and complex carbs. Premade recovery shakes or snacking on something more substantial during the cooldown can help if you can’t stomach a lot.

  • Pay special attention to hydration as you’ll probably dehydrate during the night instead of being able to ‘catch up’ during the day liks you would with a morning session. (I leave a glass of water by my bed to that end)

  • Make sure your intake during the day and workout fuelling is sufficient, especially for higher intensities- there’s some general recovery benefit there, but you’re also necessitating a bigger reliance on your intake earlier in the day.

  • Anecdotally, I prefer to do z2 rides before bed if possible. (Lower glycogen demand?)

Finally, I’ve found that feeling a bit sluggish upon waking up is unavoidable after soms bigger/more challenging workouts, but it usually dissipates within a couple of hours. As long as it’s fair!y minor not impacting my health or other committments I don’t worry about it too much, and I haven’t found it to be significantly impactful on performance. :slightly_smiling_face:

3 Likes
6

Fatigue is part of training-see Coggan CP model depending on training stress. Maybe the 3 workouts are too little or too hard and a more even distribution is better? When the rest week is on, I’m especially tired too. Try power naps.

7

Thanks! This sounds like a good idea. My approach has been “it’s only 30 min, how much food could I need”. I’ll try changing that

8

They’re 3 30min workouts, most of them not sprints. I had to scale down from 3.5h /week for time reasons. Doing those 3.5h in the morning didn’t result in any significant tiredness