Early Morning Training

If you're trying to lose weight and get in shape, you should start doing early morning workout. I usually do early morning workouts during the spring and summer when the weather is nice. During the fall and winter, I switch to doing most of my running and cycling at Bally's. Early morning workouts help to burn off the fat from your body in the most stubborn places because the primary energy source is fat.

This is from an article on early morning training:

When is the best time of day to do your cardio? The answer is any time! The most important thing is that you just do it. Continuous cardiovascular exercise, such as walking, jogging, stairclimbing, or cycling, sustained for at least 30 minutes, will burn body fat no matter when you do it. However, if you want to get the maximum benefits possible from every minute you invest in your workouts, then you should consider getting up early and doing cardio before you eat your first meal - even if you're not a "morning person." Early morning cardio on an empty stomach has three major advantages over exercising later in the day:

Early morning before you eat, your levels of muscle and liver glycogen (stored carbohydrate) are low. If you eat dinner at 7 p.m and you eat breakfast at 7 a.m., that's 12 hours without food. During this 12-hour overnight fast, your levels of glycogen slowly decline to provide glucose for various bodily functions that go on even while you sleep. As a result, you wake up in the morning with depleted glycogen and lower blood sugar - the optimum environment for burning fat instead of carbohydrate. How much more fat you'll burn is uncertain, but some studies have suggested that up to 300% more fat is burned when cardio is done in a fasted, glycogen-depleted state.

Morning Cardio Benefit #1

So how exactly does this work? It's quite simple, really. Carbohydrate (glycogen) is your body's primary and preferred energy source. When your primary fuel source is in short supply, this forces your body to tap into its secondary or reserve energy source; body fat. If you do cardio immediately after eating a meal, you'll still burn fat, but you'll burn less of it because you'll be burning off the carbohydrates you ate first. You always burn a combination of fat and carbohydrate for fuel, but depending on when you exercise, you can burn a greater proportion of fat relative to carbohydrate. If doing cardio first thing in the morning is not an option for you, then the second best time to do it would be immediately after weight training. Lifting weights is anaerobic (carbohydrate-burning) by nature, and therefore depletes muscle glycogen. That's why a post lifting cardio session has a similar effect as morning cardio on an empty stomach.

If you're interested in this type of training, click on the link to read the whole article.