Waking up at 6 AM and doing workout did wonders to my mental health.

What do you think was the difference with working out in the evening or just shifting your day by a couple hours?

Not op, but I have been forced to switch to morning workouts for the past year and they as bad as they always were for me.

Above low intensity and I am impaired for the rest of the day - struggling with low energy, cognitively dulled and desperate for a nap. This applies even though it's not from sacrificing sleep at 05:00 like some folk do but a leisurely 08:30 or later.

My evening workout schedule (for decades) lets me push to total exhaustion and pass out immediately after eating. One of it's prime benefits was totally solving insomnia/sleep-procrastination of a night owl with an involuntarily regular sleep schedule. I am always spent after exercise not energised.

For me the difference is anaerobic vs aerobic exercise.

I can only go for a run first thing in the morning. Although, that's more about the empty stomach (and outdoor temperatures in summer). If I got sugar in my blood, food in my stomach, I kinda "crash" very soon and tend to get heart burn. The empty stomach also makes me feel lighter and the slight hunger feels in tune with the overall experience, if that makes sense. Running in the morning doesn't leave me tired, if I've reached the "maintenance level" (got no specific exercise goal, tho). Aerobic exercise has the benefit of giving me overall higher "energy" by making everything slightly less exhausting. And the peaceful calm of an early morning run in the green (city park) is a blissful, almost spiritual experience radiating into the day. That said, running in the evening can be fun, too, because I feel supernaturally fast. I do that too sometimes, if I feel very, very stressed/anxious and need an outlet.

On the other hand, doing strength training blood sugar is an asset, but pushing limits leaves me exhausted and tired no matter what. I presume, it's natural to feel tired, if the body has tissue damage to repair from exercise. The difference is, running can be done effectively (as far as health maintenance is concerned) without excessive tissue damage and inherently pushing limits as much.

Lifting heavy in the morning uplifted my mood. Gave mental energy for the rest of the day. I took small nap after it but that’s it.

I’ve had the same experience as the parent (well, 7am). No idea but it was a marked difference.

not if you're naturally not a morning person

It's silly to say that "Europe" has substantially different working hours for the majority of the population, compared to the US. Grindset hustle sigma influencers are an outlier of course.

For having lived in both continents, American is generally an early morning culture and Europe is generally an evening culture. There are local differences within the continents of course.

I wouldn't generalize Europe like that, our differences in the normal schedule are massive from north to south.

Here in Sweden, it's a morning culture. Blue collar workers often start work at 7, daycare is open from 6 in the morning for parents with early jobs, dinner is at 18 or even 17 for people. At 22, most places are closed including supermarkets and restaurant kitchens. Lunch for the vast majority of working people is at noon.

That is totally different to a country like Spain, where you see families - with kids! - start dinner at 21 or later. In Sweden people would say it's strange not to have your kids in bed by then. Lunch is at 14, cities are full of life until midnight every day.

A large part of that is probably due to daylight hours. A big chunk of Sweden is dark by 16 for the winter half of the year. During November-January there's minimal light and it's gone by 15.

Don't know about the US, but isn't it "9to5" there too? Is there much "culture" before 9?

I can say in Germany "9to..." is also applying to cafes, supermarkets, ... pretty much nothing is open before 8 in the morning (with the exception of stuff in train stations), even some supermarkets only open at 9. So there certainly is no "culture" earlier than that. School often starts at 8, so parents frequently start the day at 6 or earlier. Same if you got an hour commuting time etc.. I don't know anybody who would wake up at 4 by choice, tho.

agree with this poster. my "normal" is falling asleep between 00h-02h (12am-2am) and waking between 09-10h (9am - 10am). waking up earlier than this usually results in me being irritable for the first few hours of being awake. i spent thousands on CBT-i in part to try and become a morning person and fix this. it did quell my insomnia, but the "morning person" part of my routine eroded away.