Benefits Of Morning Workout: Part 2
I am an admirer of morning workouts and on a daily streak since July 13 last year as I can remember. Except for the new year break, I am active since I started and the streak mentality made it even easier to thrive.
I was maintaining the streak just for the sake of challenging myself. But when I researched more, I realized why the streak behaviour works so well for some people in providing nonstop motivation. It trains your brain. It hits the neurons.
In Part I, I discussed three aspects of morning workouts that I just couldn’t get in the evening:
- Procrastination Killer: Since the workout is checked off the first thing in the morning, you don’t have to worry about fitness activities all day after that. Normal stretching ideas will come automatic and you will do it in free time throughout the day.
- Power of Single-Tasking: This we can get in the evening also. But since we are less stressed about the previous day in the morning, focusing is easier at that time.
- Consistency: Because there is no one to disturb you in the morning and everyone wakes early for their reasons valid enough to stay away from your way, it is easier to stay consistent in the morning. In the evenings, you may plan social hangouts, office hours may extend, the family may call. There is no such disturbance in the morning.
But apart from staying consistent, you also need the motivation to keep going. The internal rewards I have already mentioned when explaining the efficiency of streak activities, here are the social interactions that are helping me till now.
Fitness Community
Human is a social animal. He finds the kind of tribe he wants to bond with, whether it is offline or online. That’s what developed gradually when I started the morning sessions. As is the case in the cold start problem, I didn’t know anyone, neither the trainers nor the users in the gym. The motivation was hard to find if you are struggling to lift weights and every stranger around you is sweating like their banana carbs are on fire.
This is the story of every new guy in the gym. They think they are too weak, they think they are too fat. Few of them are lucky that they have someone in the initial days to go with them and guide them with the exercises. I also had when I started back in college. But here, a different city and entirely new people. I depended highly on trainers, I still look forward to them for guidance. I have made friends with them now. It is a different world in this city now.
Focus On Fitness, The Right Community Will Find You
They are two ways to build a fitness community: the extrovert way and the introvert way. Health is the aim of both kinds of people, the extrovert can either enjoy with their already going friends or the second case that happened with me: made new friends for life. We motivate each other, support each other and do partner workouts with each other. We miss those times now and when the gym reopens after everything is normal, we will sweat like crazy bulls when we hit the metal.
The second introvert way is to go with the community you already have. Friends that are there with you and willing to join you on your fitness journey. But finding the community doesn’t work every time. The dependency factor will be a major one here. Your schedules might not match, your fitness goals might be different and the harsh truth: you might like different kinds of workout which will result in not even working out together. See the whole point of going together is wasted, isn’t it?
Finding a community first and relying on them for motivation is hard. I started going alone first and built the community with time. This connection is way stronger and independent because we have seen each other grow from the starting that makes us want to stick together and know each other better. We even hang out after sessions.
Morning Breakfast
Seriously, I can’t stress this enough. No one wants to miss this. We do skip it because we can’t wake up on time. And morning workout eliminates this tension by default. After strenuous exercise, muscles go soft and we need some protein-rich foods to recover from fatigue. We can either have some snacks to eat on the way while going back home from the gym or we can have after reaching home. Either way, for morning people, breakfast is the most important meal of the day if you are working out in the fed-state, don’t know about the ones done in the fast-state.
We learn with time how much we are supposed to eat, what nutrients we are supposed to take by analyzing in the long term how our body reacts to different kinds of foods. Fitness freaks like me will compromise on taste for healthy food. But there is this subconscious mind that just rejects some kind of food, especially the ones you have a bad history with. Foods that you hated as a kid and that feeling grew stronger. I couldn’t help when I tried eating gourd for the first time I started working out. My dad cooked it clean, without any potato flavor, just blunt bitter gourd. It took a long time for me to accept its nutrition value and get over the hatred.
Your gut instinct is to stay away from these kinds of food. But the other healthy ones, they are energy boosters. I take minimal lunch every day. My breakfasts are energizing enough to carry me throughout the day with just some snacks to slack off the rest time I block from working too long in the sitting position. Yes, sitting is a crime for active lifestyle followers. We will squat instead, but “sedentary” word doesn’t exist in our dictionary. 😆
Seize The Day
A cold shower post-workout is the best feeling I get every day. I have a speaker I listen to songs on. And I play that JBL at full volume. That speaker has been with me for the last four years and it has touched so many lives. Many people know me because of this audio system. I shower at full-volume songs, recently I did some pulse squats too while showering. 😂
Sometimes I also saw people dance to my songs while setting their hair. I made new friends because of my music taste. After that, I am so calm and relaxed that I plan my entire day’s schedule while coming back home. Then I just gear up to crush the day. It is that simple. And one thing I forgot to mention because it will take an entire article for it: my entire transformation journey is on Instagram. I have customized Instagram for maximum productivity. Yes, you heard that right and I can proudly say that again. Instagram for productivity, Instagram for motivation!
This article belongs to a series of articles I am publishing in this 21-day streak. See the first one here. This is the eighteenth one in the line-up. 3 more to go…
To read the remaining ones, navigate to the end of the first article where there is a reference list sorted by day number.
~ S.
