Getting going…
In the long morning dark of winter, when I intend to wake up and get going, the gravity of unconsciousness drags a stubborn resistance against my greatest intentions and strongest motivations. It’s like an ass pulling a cart in the opposite direction. It doesn’t care about the destination, it has a will of its own.
I’ve tried many and various tactics to overcoming sleepiness in the morning dark. Most of which have had low to moderate effects. Perhaps some people are wired differently and can pop awake from sheer will or desire for the day, but not me. The ass pulling the cart wants to sleep long and there is no persuading or life hacking out of it. It’s force within me, but seemingly independent from most of the rest of me. Ultimately, I have to work with it. So, the question becomes, what does it want?
Part of the pull to continue sleeping in the morning is definitely tiredness. Sometimes I go to bed late and am waking up before I’m done resting. Sometimes I’ve been working hard or exercising hard and I need more rest. Getting enough sleep to feel rested, for me, has to be priority number one if I want to be ready to get out of bed in the morning. But there’s more to it than that. Some days I find it easier to roll out of the covers than others, and my observation is that it has a lot to do with what and how much I am planning to do that day. Too much work, pressures of tasks and to dos, and lots of novelty to contend with (whether good, bad, or otherwise) give me some amount of overwhelm and anxiety. I don’t want to face. The outlook is frankly painful, which isn’t enough to cause me to roll over and return to the blacked out bliss of sleep, but when it’s painful and there’s seemingly no meaning, purpose, or reward attached then I recoil from the day. The ass pulling the cart grows too relentless to overcome, and I give in.
But when I give in, I lose something. I lose the opportunity to experience my favorite part of the day: the morning. I lose the chance to get a jump on things and address some of those tasks and to dos. It feels wonderful to roll over and return to sleep, but I pay for it later and give in to a cycle of staying up late because I have so much to do, resulting in less sleep, resulting in a stronger pull to sleep in when the morning comes.
Morning movement…
I had to talk about getting going in the morning before talking about movement because morning movement is essential to building energy and becoming strong, and if I can’t get going early enough I miss this crucial component of movement. On the internet you can find an infinitely growing list of activities to do first thing in the morning when or near when you get out of bed. Obviously no one can do them all, you have to choose. I have my own get out of bed rituals, and, near the top, I begin the day with a very short lying down stretching routine. I’ve tried other practices that are more strenuous or upright, but they are not a good fit for me. When fighting that urge to continue sleeping, if I’m asking myself to jump into something that feels hard before I go live the rest of my hard day (as I imagine it in the morning) I’m not going to do it. Instead, I have found starting movement that feels good to me and is in a position that requires minimal alertness. I start by lying down on the ground in my living room and doing windshield wipers with my legs. That’s all. Note, I go out of my bedroom so that I am no longer in the sleep space and lie down elsewhere. Windshield wipers can be done by bending your legs at the knee and swaying both legs loosely together from one side to the other. As I start doing this sometimes I count, and sometimes not, but eventually I will start counting until I reach about 30 or until I feel a little more awake. This is the entire point. It’s not the specific activity that matters, it’s an activity which allows me to get a little more alertness through both time and gentle motion.
After doing some windshield wipers the pull of the ass is quite diminished, and I move on to lying in reclined butterfly pose – feet together, knees spread wide apart to the sides. This is an additional hip opener adding to the windshield wipers which furthers flexibility in the hips and low spine. So much movement generates from this region of the body. Doing light stretches and exercises targeted at this region feels like basic hygiene, i.e., like brushing your teeth. It facilitates everything else I’ll do that day. After the butterfly pose I complete my little routine with 20 bridging repetitions and 20 second holds on each side with legs bent at the knee and pressing into my hand on the same side.
By the time I’m finished with this very brief lying down routine I usually don’t feel the desire to go back to bed. I don’t always feel quite ready to jump into anything taxing or strenuous, but I feel awake. Getting my ass (pun intended) out of bed to do the stretches is made simpler because I can ask myself: “Can you get up and go lie down in the floor? That’s all you have to do. Can you do just that?” Most of the time the answer is “yes”. By giving myself something very easy, not painful, and sometimes something I recall feels good I am able to bypass the heavy resistance I feel to getting up in the morning. Additionally, this morning routine sets up me to perform more complex and intense movements later.
Timing a workout…
Writers are often instructed to experiment and find their writing zone, with some feeling more creative and productive at night, others in the morning, and I suppose there are midday writers out there, but it seems most like the quiet hours. Exercise functions similarly. There are times of the day when the body is more ready for a workout than others. For myself, I like mid-afternoon. My brain is usually ready for a break after about 1:30 and that makes it easier for me to focus on a workout instead of thinking about other things, and I often need an energy boost around that time. It’s worth remembering that exercise gives you energy. It gets the blood flowing, literally. While mid-afternoon is my ideal time, it’s not always a practical time. Meetings, agendas, life in general may occupy or butt into midday time slots. If there’s a workout I really need to perform consistently, I have to plan it for before or after work hours or schedule it directly into my workday.
Making progress…
Getting into a routine is the first step in making progress with working out. I’ve had the most success with making exercise a habit by establishing a bare minimum and sticking to that bare minimum with great consistency. And by bare minimum, I mean so completely easily doable that I can’t fail to accomplish it. For strength training, I have set bare minimums at 1 set of 1 to 3 reps at lowest weight or just body weight. If I do just that much for each exercise then I get a gold star. Why? Because I’m creating and maintaining a habit. When the bare minimum is that low it’s possible to complete the requirements even with very little time, very little energy, or very little motivation. Usually I do more, but sometimes the minimum is all that happens and that’s fine. Having the bare minimum option helps me learn to show up regularly and consistently, until the workout eventually becomes more habit than something I need to really think about and get motivated to complete. I learned this approach when recovering from a bad ankle sprain. After a few weeks of rehab I started walking again. I couldn’t go far, so I started with going to the end of my block and back. Slowly I added in additional blocks, never demanding more than to the end of only a little ways into the neighborhood. I discovered that it became a simple matter to step outside and go for a walk even when the walks became quite long because I had the habit and didn’t feel a great pressure to go hard or perform.
If you’re like me there’s a little noisy part of you that says, “that’s all well and good, but I do want to go hard and perform.” I totally get it. Here’s what you need to know, you still can. Setting a bare minimum doesn’t mean you never go hard. It means you’re disciplined in showing up, and when you show up then if you want to go hard, by all means go hard. The discipline of showing up to perform at a bare minimum or more wins out as a better, more reliable practice than a go hard mentality that fails to show up or for practical reasons (like illness and injury) isn’t a possibility.
Getting addicted…
With a movement habit in hand, it’s possible to start to feel the craving for movement. Eventually your mind will start attaching dopaminergic states and the feel-good hormones of endorphins to movement activities and practices. It’s literally a cure for depression. We’re made to move! But I think we’ve attached too many self-assessments and identities to movement. We think we’re bad if we’re not good at it, or we think only certain types of personalities (e.g., jocks or young women living in the state of California) would ever play a sport or go to a yoga class. All of these ideas are ridiculous. The evidence is abundantly clear that movement is for everyone at every age in any walk of life. I truly don’t believe that it matters how intense a workout is, what matters is that you participated in some movement. So do what’s fun. Do what you will do, as they say. Keep it low pressure. But if you have a goal, and you need to train, and winter mornings are tough for you like they are for me, enlist a workout buddy, get a trainer, or sign up for a class – anything to get you up and out and totally addicted to movement.
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