Is it more effective to train in the morning than in the afternoon?

Former Rukh Lviv doctor Dmytro Babeliuk talks about the impact of time biorhythms on the effectiveness of footballers' training.

"Training in the morning is more effective than in the afternoon. This is the conclusion reached by scientists in a recently published article on the impact of circadian rhythms on the performance of elite athletes.

The study involved 30 athletes who trained for 28 weeks in a two-training regime (morning at 11:00 and afternoon at 16:00). Analysing the data from GPS trackers, the researchers concluded that the total mileage, the number of accelerations and decelerations, cognitive abilities and stress resistance were significantly higher during morning training compared to afternoon workouts. And this makes sense, because according to circadian rhythms and individual "biological clocks", the body is more productive in the morning, which is why, for example, professional football clubs traditionally schedule their training sessions in the morning.

There are also interesting things about pre-game training. For example, during my time at Rukh under Leonid Kuchuk, all pre-game training sessions started at the same time as the game was due to start the next day. This was done in order to signal to the body that it would need to give its best exactly 24 hours later at the same time as during the training.

It is also interesting that this article was written by Adam Owen, a practicing coach who until recently worked as Lee Johnson's assistant at Hibernian, training Nikolay Kukharevich. Today, Dr Owen works as an advisor to Polish side Lech Poznan," Babeliuk wrote on Telegram.