Early morning workouts

Yesterday was Asher’s very first 5:30 a.m. swim workout. As part of the scheduling dance to fit everyone in throughout the week, his group is assigned the Wednesday 5:30 -6:45 a.m. slot.

His other practices are always in the evening, so it’s just one early day per week (and, it’s optional.)

But when the schedules came out, he said that he wanted to go to the early ones. In part, because I think he thought it sounded exciting/cool to get up and go that early. Also, we heard once from an older swim friend that in the past, the early a.m. practices are shockingly not as well attended! Ha. But she said the practices with smaller numbers are awesome and you get a lot more personal attention from the coach.

Additionally, working out in the morning means….you don’t have to workout at night!! (And it gives my busy bee Asher a probably welcome, and needed, “free night” from activities.)

This is one of the most glaringly obvious benefits to early morning workouts, for anyone. There is really nothing better than wiping up your sweat before the sun is even up, knowing that for the rest of the day, you are DONE!!

That being said, I have been totally off the early morning workout train for a long time now. I used to be very ON that train, maybe like an assistant conductor. 🙂 I think maybe from ~2016-2019 or so??? I didn’t go to the gym early every day, but I definitely would go often. I remember going to the gym around 4:45 a.m. when they opened sometimes, to even fit in a workout before leaving for the hospital at 6:15 for a 12 hour shift!! OMG. I would go early even on my days off, just to get my workout out of the way.

Now….I don’t really know what happened. Maybe I’m getting old? (Ha- that’s a total cop out, because I can guarantee that as I type this, there are oodles of actual old people working out at my gym right now.)

I think it might be that I’ve adopted other (much more relaxing) morning routines…like journaling or blogging, drinking my tea in my quiet office, etc. And once I had a taste of that, the bright gym lights and um, exertion of effort at 5-6 a.m. is just no longer appealing. We drove past one of those Burn Bootcamp places on the way to the pool yesterday, and there were at least 20 people in a class, high-kneeing and burpee-ing around full throttle at 5:15 already! I was like….ughhhhhh…..how are they doing that?!

Anyway, Asher seemed a little tired/ crabby when he first woke up at 5 a.m., but overall was in good spirits. He seemed to be proud of himself going off to school knowing that he had already worked out for 1 hour and 15 minutes, while everyone else had probably just had a bowl of cereal so far. 🙂

Early morning workouts really are THE BEST…once they are over. 😉 I also love the “one and done” shower thing- no waiting around feeling grungy to shower until after your later workout, or needing a second shower later in the day because you are all gross again.

The worst workout, in my opinion, is the one you “say” you’ll do “later”. Or “after dinner”. Yeah…no. So I am a big fan of gettin’ ‘er done. Maybe eventually I’ll go back to the early mornings. For now, I just need to work on getting myself back into the actual gym, before my husband cancels my gym membership on me. 😬

Yesterday’s workout: Drained and cleaned out the hot tub!! I climbed in there and used some elbow grease to really make her shine. 🙂

Do you workout in the morning? Have you ever? When is your favorite time to workout?

Thought of the Day:

When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new. -Dalai Lama

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for convenient hose/ water access to our back patio for filling up the hot tub.