Benefits Of Morning Workout: Part 1
Introduction
Be it morning or evening, workouts keep you active and maintain energy levels for daily chores. There are a lot of factors that decide which time suits you better: regular schedule, sleep chronotype, workout formats, fitness goals, fitness community, etc. These factors are at the top of my head right now. As you can see, all these factors are person dependent, and the first criterion was the most important to me: schedule.
I am a morning person, the 4 AM Lion chronotype (more about chronotypes here) who wakes up before sunrise and also sleeps few hours past sunset. It is the key to master circadian rhythm and listen to what your body wants.
Have a strong reason to wake up early
To leverage morning time, I tried some things like walking in my room, setting the bed, task planning for the day, etc. But these were not enough motivation to challenge the gravity between me and my pillow.
Then I thought of starting workouts in the morning. My mornings were filled with procrastination anyways, so I was hoping that morning exercise would energise me in the kind of right way.
I wanted to see if I could move with the Sun. I have heard many benefits of morning workouts and based on my work schedule and daily commute timings when I was starting, the morning was the best time to improve my fitness levels.
There are some actionable strategies that I tried to make my morning workouts effective and consistent. I will discuss those strategies in future articles. But today, I will share the benefits of morning workouts. There are many I’ll tell you. That’s why this is just Part I in the series.
1. Procrastination killer
Usual timings are either 6:00 or 6:30 AM. It is an instructor-led group class that lasts around an hour, including warmup, mobility, WOD, stretching, and a shoutout in the end.
Doing all activities in a fixed time frame everyday consolidates the idea that you are supposed to complete a set of tasks in a time slot every day. Push, sweat, celebrate. That’s it.
Want more? Then get a cold shower and go all carpe diem. The world is your oyster.
2. Power of single-tasking
We cover all these stages in less than 60 minutes time frame. It is a group workout class. So yes, the trainer knows when to start what kind of exercise.
Every trainee is doing the same kind of workout at a time. It’s not like one person is stretching at some corner, and another member is waving HIIT ropes. Nope. Sounds hot, but doesn’t work.
It’s an instructor-led class, so you focus on one kind of exercise at a time and repeat a specific set of movements in it based on the muscle focus.
3. Consistency
Every person has different fitness goals based on their lifestyle, health condition, and age. But the most important thing that ensures you follow your fitness journey is consistency.
The workout should come naturally; it should not feel like an obligation that you are living up for a definite period. Show up every day, push every day and take rest whenever the body demands it.
That’s all for now. Here is part 2 in continuation.
This post belongs to a series of articles I am publishing in this 21-day streak. See the first one here. It is the second one in the line-up — 19 more to go.
To read the remaining ones, navigate to the end of the first article where there is a reference list ordered by day number.
~ Sanjeev
