Early morning workouts!

If I’m completely honest, most of my better days don’t start with a bad morning. Most of the time a bad morning just ends up being a even worse day, right? But I don’t buy this excuse that some of are just destined to never becoming a morning person. Sometimes a 6 am wake up can seem like hell on Earth and other times it really isn’t too bad. That couldn’t be the case if we were all programmed to either love or loathe an early morning start.

So here is some good news! The chances of having a good day are greatly increased if you can force yourself to do some exercise in the morning. Whether it be a full workout after breakfast, or a quick neural morning primer (like we are supposed to know what one of those is!!) as soon as you open those eyes.

Neural morning primers, or NMPs, are quick bodyweight workouts that are designed to fire up that nervous system in under 10 minutes. Hopefully allowing you to bring more oxygen into your body and set you up for an especially productive day. And the best thing is that you can design them yourself. As long as you ensure that it contains one explosive movement, one static stretch and lasts for no more that 10 minutes then you have yourself a new NMP, just as long as you remember to do it as soon as you wake up of course!

You could of course complete your full workout in the morning, which plenty of us do. The benefits are obvious, you should be feeling productive for the rest of the day and you don’t have to worry about squeezing in a rushed workout after work or before dinner. At the end of the day our lives will be dictated by our routines and some of us might just not have the time to fit in a morning workout but we all have time for a quick 10 minute exercise.

To get the most out of any exercise or workout you want to be feeling at your best when you begin. There is no point moving your workouts to the morning if your effort levels and intensity is going to decrease. In short, that means that you need to feel as eager and ready to work in the morning as you do at night – a classic case of easier said than done.

Thankfully there are a few things that we can do to help our bodies be up and ready to go.

You can start off with the obvious tricks. Let a cup of coffee become your new best friend. One as soon as you wake up can set you on the right track for the rest of the day. Of course you could just try going to bed earlier. That way you will be getting just as much sleep as if you were having a lie in. Saying that, waking up at 6 will probably never feel like a lie in to any of us.

Personally I like the morning shock therapy method myself. So I opt for as many loud alarms as possible, hidden in as many places in my room as I can find. Then just add one high volume radio station and a easterly facing window and you should be fine. With all that noise and light you won’t even want to stay in bed!

Those of us that are used to early mornings know that it gets easier as time goes on. Pretty soon you will find yourself down to just the one alarm, even if you do need to leave it on the other side of the room. But getting up is only half of the battle. Then you need to motivate yourself to indulge in some sort of exercise and unfortunately there aren’t quite as many life hacks for that.

Just keep telling yourself that no one ever had a good day that started with a bad morning and you should be fine. After that you will be ready to make the most of each and every single day!