Having a morning routine is the first step towards becoming a more productive person. One of the best additions you can make to your morning routine is adding exercise at least a few days per week. Morning exercise will bring benefits, including better sleep, healthier eating choices, and a daily energy boost.
Starting to exercise each morning can be a difficult task, but once you get started it is hard to stop. With this change, you will find that your mornings seem to start out in a more positive and productive way. These morning benefits will bleed into the rest of your day as well!
You might be worried that there is not enough time in the morning to get any real exercise done. While you are correct that you can’t bike 20 miles or do a 2-hour workout at the gym in the morning, you can do 15 minutes of yoga from your living room or run 2 miles around your neighborhood. The important part is getting something done, even if it may feel small!
Morning exercise is a great addition to any morning routine. The changes you have to make to your schedule to make it happen are not as hard as they might seem! Check out the benefits below!
This post is all about reasons why adding morning exercise to your morning routine will be beneficial!
The Importance of Morning Exercise
Morning exercise is a game-changer for your day-to-day. You will see the benefits almost immediately! Continue reading to learn some of the major benefits!
How Do Your Habits Need to Change for Morning Exercise?
Depending on how your morning schedule typically looks, you may need to adjust things to accommodate morning exercise. It can be hard to make changes to a schedule you are comfortable with, but the changes are worth it! There are a few changes you need to make:
- Wake up earlier: The most obvious change to accommodate morning exercise is to wake up earlier. If you can wake up earlier, then you will have more time right away to get that exercise done. This may sound hard at first, and it is, but it quickly gets better and is worth it! Learning to wake up earlier is all about repetition. You just need to try it a bunch of times until your body can adjust. It should only take about 3 days for your body to figure it out! Once you get used to waking up earlier, you can fit in those morning workouts!
- Go to bed earlier: This one is a little different! Without good sleep, you will struggle to wake up early and motivate yourself to do morning exercise. To solve that problem, you need to learn to go to bed earlier. If you can start going to bed earlier, your sleep will absolutely improve. Similar to the previous point, it takes some time to get used to the new schedule, but that change is worth it!
- Change your diet: Your diet can also have a major effect on your sleep. Again, you need good sleep to be able to wake up early and get those morning workouts done, so you need to be in control of your diet! There is evidence that having a poor diet can lead to bad sleep. If you are eating poorly, your body might need to be working overtime to process those foods. If your body is working while it should be sleeping, your sleep quality will suffer. Make the change to healthier options and morning exercise will become much more achievable!
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What Exercises Are Easy to Do In the Morning?
The next thing to figure out is what kind of exercises will work for you to do in the morning. You might think that you need to do long, intense workouts to get many benefits, but short workouts can be very effective!
Especially when you are starting out, short workouts are the way to go. They are much easier and much less intimidating than having to get up even earlier and doing a long run or workout. Below are a few examples of easy workouts to do in the morning:
- Running: Running is one of the best quick workouts you can do, and it is easy to get into! You do not need to be fast or need to go a long distance. All you need to do is lace up your shoes and get moving around your neighborhood. Even just a short half-mile run will get your heart rate up and get your body in exercise mode. This makes for a great 15-20 minute exercise that you can get started with!
- Gym: The gym is another great morning workout spot. There are gyms all over the place in metro areas, so finding one shouldn’t be too hard. It can be great to head into the gym early in the morning when there are almost no people around. You can get a quick 20-minute workout in and feel great! You can also substitute the gym with an at-home workout using similar equipment. Just having a 20-pound weight and your own body weight will let you get a great, quick workout in at home as well.
- Yoga: Yoga is another great way to get a quick workout in! This one is a little different because it will be more focused on body weight. There are tons of videos online to look at that can help you do a quick session that will help you get stronger and more flexible. Give it a try!
6 Benefits of Morning Exercise for Your Morning Routine
Now that understand the changes that need to be made to wake up earlier and what workouts you can do, we can get into the benefits! There are a lot of good results that come from morning exercise. Check them out below!
1. Boost energy
The first benefit that you will see from starting morning exercise is an energy boost. It seems like doing morning exercise would actually decrease your energy levels, but it is actually the opposite!
At the start, you absolutely will feel more tired after your workouts. This is totally normal! That tiredness will continue after your workouts, but your energy for the rest of the day will start to increase over time. This is because your body is getting used to needing more energy for early workouts, so it will start to be more alert and ready to go. Over time you will notice that you seem to have more energy when you wake up and more as you get through the workday.
2. Avoid distractions
The next benefit of morning exercise is that it can help you avoid distractions. When you wait to do an activity till later in the day, you often leave the opportunity for procrastination. It is far too easy to tell yourself you just need to do this other stuff and you will get to the exercise later. A lot of times that exercise will end up slipping through the cracks and not getting done.
If you can change that schedule and have your exercise as the first thing you do in the day, you will be much more likely to get it done without distractions. There will be no time to skip out on your commitment to morning exercise, and you will be able to knock it out.
You may also find that getting exercise done in the morning motivates you to be more on-task for the rest of the day as well! The sense of accomplishment that you get from starting your day with exercise is powerful and can be very motivating!
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3. Improved sleep
Although they are at opposite ends of the day, exercising in the morning offers great benefits to your sleep! The biggest one is that your body will begin to increase its melatonin levels at bedtime. There is evidence that exposure to sunlight early in the morning can help regulate your circadian rhythm. With better regulation of your rhythm, your internal body clock will know when to start producing melatonin. Increased melatonin will help you get to sleep easier, stay in a deep sleep state for longer, and prevent as many nighttime awakenings. Obviously, all of these things lead to improved sleep!
4. Beat the heat
By getting your exercise done in the morning, you will find that you beat the heat most of the time! Especially in summer, days get incredibly hot. Sometimes so much so that it is unsafe to work out later in the day. It is better for our body, especially our heart, to skip exercise in especially warm weather, so morning exercise is a great alternative!
By getting out early and doing your exercise in the morning, you will feel much better during and after your workout. You will find that you become less dehydrated and get less sun exposure by getting your exercise done first thing.
5. Helps you make healthier choices
This one really depends on your own personal motivation, but it is still a great benefit! Working out early can have an impact on the choices that you make for the rest of your day. It can motivate you to make healthier, smarter choices that will pay off for the rest of your life. This mainly comes from the strong sense of accomplishment that you can get from morning exercise.
This feeling can lead you to feel differently about the other choices you make throughout the day. If you get out early and exercise, you may want to follow that up with other healthy choices like healthier food or an earlier bedtime. The link depends on your own self-discipline to make those good choices, but the link becomes easier with morning exercise!
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6. Increased activity
Another benefit of morning exercise is generally higher activity throughout the day. If you can start your day with morning exercise, you will have a better chance of having an active day right away. There is even potential for a second activity in the day that you can do after work/other daily tasks. You will find that extra activity is much easier to come by when you start out your day in a positive way.
I hope you better understand the benefits of morning exercise and have learned some great tips! Be sure to reach out to ourteam@wellroundedyou.com if you have any comments or questions!
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