Over the last few years, I’ve become one of the “those” morning workout people. But before you roll your eyes or come armed with excuses on why a morning workout could never work for you, let me tell you something: I used to have that same eye roll. Those same excuses.
I firmly believed getting up anytime before the 5 o’clock a.m. hour was pure insanity. I could get behind rising at 5am to get some work done before the kids woke up or to head into the office and avoid traffic. But rising before 5am? No thank you. Running or lifting weights before the sun was up? Nope, not for me.
But then, you know, life happened. My kids got older and had their own extracurricular things after school. Gone were the days I could take my babies or toddlers to the gym child care after work to get my sweat on. Working full time means I don’t have the luxury of any sort of mid-morning workout. I have to utilize the hours outside of work. I found my weekly workouts getting less and less frequent because the after-work commitments were becoming more and more demanding.
I had to make a change.
My husband and I are both committed to staying (somewhat) fit and we support each other in that. That means we coordinate our schedules to ensure we can get the kids where they need to be while also fitting in regular gym sessions. My husband loves evening workouts. Late evening. As in he is perfectly fine with being at the gym when the kids are sleeping. I prefer to be in sweatpants versus breaking a sweat at that hour.
I knew what the change had to be.
If I wanted to stay committed to getting to the gym four to five days a week, some of those were going to have to be early morning workouts.
After some internal battles, I took the plunge.
I still remember the first time my alarm went off at 4:10am. It was miserable. Every excuse in the book rolled through my head. But I made myself do it.
And then I made myself do it again another morning that week.
And again.
One motivator for me is group fitness. I attend a local Orange Theory Fitness which means in my morning haziness I have a coach telling me what to do. Working out in the morning is hard enough. I don’t also need to figure out what I should be doing.
I am now about three years into this whole working-out-before-the-sun-comes-up way of life. Not all days. But most days. I won’t lie and say I love getting up during the 4 o’clock hour. I don’t. But it has become a whole lot easier as time goes on. And every day when I am finished I honestly feel a huge sense of accomplishment. All before 6am.
Mom, if you have something in life you are passionate about but are having trouble fitting it in, see if you can re-prioritize. We don’t have the capacity to do it all or to care about it all. Find those things that are truly meaningful to you and see if you too can make a change to get that feeling of accomplishment. Even if it feels uncomfortable at first, I promise you the feeling you have once you get it done is well worth it.
Read more of Stephanie’s contributions to allmomdoes here.
