Morning Gym
Top 5 Ways To Make It Great
If you are planning to do some morning gym, then you're in the right place. Or perhaps you're already going to the gym in the morning, but want to perform better.
For any situation, let's see how we can make your morning sessions better!
1. Eat Before You Exercise
If you're at all serious with your training, then it's a must to have something to eat before you exercise. What happens if you go straight from bed to working out is that you basically don't have any fuel in your body. I know that some people argue that you will burn more fat if you don't eat before, but that argument is plain false according to research.
When you haven't eaten for a while, your body actually enters survival mode. So instead of drawing protein from your normal sources, it starts to take protein straight from your muscles - thereby breaking them down and making you weaker.
On top of that, there's no way you will be able to perform a good workout on an empty stomach. It's better to get a high-quality session at the gym where both your body and mind are set up for success.
So even if you want to lose some weight at the gym, don't stop eating before exercising. The long-term effects will just be negative.
2. Remove All Barriers
It's especially important for a morning gym session that you remove all possible barriers that might stop you from working out. For example, it might be really far to your gym location or you might have to carry a lot of luggage around all day.
Anything that makes it less attractive in your eyes to put in the effort to go to the gym in the morning must be mitigated. What happens otherwise?
Otherwise you will procrastinate. For sure. It happens to all of us.
So how to do it? Simple.
- It's too far to the gym - Change place or do your workout at home instead.
- Have to stop somewhere to buy breakfast - Have something ready at home that you can eat before the gym. You can have your real breakfast afterwards.
- It's too cold outside to get to the gym - Get a really warm jacket!
- Etc. etc.
Most of our excuses are actually easy to overcome, so remove as many barriers as you can.
3. Make It Short And Intense
I usually recommend a quite short and intense workout when going to the gym in the morning. Why? First of all, you often don't have the time to be there too long before you have to get going somewhere else. If you work out too long, you're just gonna make yourself stressed out for the rest of the day.
Second of all, and most important, it's much better to work out 5 times a week for 20 minutes each than it is to work out once per week for 1.5 hours. Spread your training sessions and it's much easier to keep up your motivation.
A common mistake is to start a new training period with a few really long and tough workouts. Unfortunately what happens next is nothing. No more workouts for weeks... So don't make it a boring never-ending session. Instead, make it short, intense and fun!
4. Do It Together With A Friend
If you have a friend who's also interested in some morning gym, then why not join forces. There are some great benefits to this, such as:
- You have someone to motivate you during your exercise
- You are much less likely to procrastinate your workout
- It makes it more fun
All these are great reasons for finding a friend or colleague that want to start their days with a great workout at the gym.
5. Eat After You Exercise
It's not enough to just eat before your workout, you gotta eat afterwards as well. This way, you make sure that you can really reap all the benefits from an early workout. Your body needs carbohydrates and protein after a morning at the gym.
The same rule applies whether you're training to become stronger or to lose weight. You know, burning fat takes energy too so make sure you fill up your energy storage right away.
Follow these 5 tips and have a try at a morning gym session. I bet you can make it quite fun and really rewarding. In short, if you eat right, make it short and fun together with a friend you have all the changes in the world to make this into a real great habit.
Early Riser > Morning Exercise > Morning Gym
Thanks for reading! By Matthew M. McEwan
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