When I was in college, my dorm mate and I had an alarm clock that would play a song off a CD as your wake up alarm. We thought this was the coolest thing ever so of course we picked a song we thought we would love to wake up to everyday. But after a month of being woke up for 6am football practice we pretty much hated that song. Our human nature wants to take the path of least resistance, it’s built into every one of us, and waking up and training that early is definitely not the path of least resistance. When I took a break from powerlifting, I struggled to find the motivation to train. My knees hurt, I was way out of shape, and I was quick to move training around for other priorities. I knew the group training of CrossFit would help but I also knew that with my schedule, if I don’t train early in the morning, I’m not likely to train at all. So, my wife and I made the commitment to training at 5am at least twice a week. Here are two of the benefits I’ve found from training this early
- It makes training a priority. I’ve been in this business long enough to see what happens to people when they fall off the wagon hard, I know what spending the first 50 years of your life focused on work does to your physical and mental health, I’ve seen what happens when health isn’t a priority and becomes a giant, almost impossible to overcome obstacle. I know what lies on the other side of that life decision and it isn’t pretty. I don’t want to be 40, 50, or 60 and playing catch up on my health. I want my children to live a health and happy life so I want to model that behavior for them. I don’t want to waste the gift of being able bodied and healthy by letting it slip away and the only way to do that is to make it a priority.
- It builds your confidence in overcoming obstacles. When that alarm goes off, it is a serious battle to turn down the temptation of hitting the snooze button. But when you win that battle, you start your day with confidence and winning becomes a habit. Likewise, if you hit the alarm clock, losing becomes a habit and your confidence will falter. You start feeling down on yourself and start making poor choices in other areas. I’ve seen so many people who wake up late, skip breakfast, snack on poor food choices at work, then try to make it to the gym just to have a terrible workout because their nutrition was terrible during the day. Each day, they wake up, and solidify the fact that they “can’t” do it. One poor decision leads to the next and each new decision seems like a mountain to overcome. Win the battle against the alarm clock, win the battle of going to the gym, celebrate your success and the rest of the day will seem so much easier.
If you enjoyed this blog post, check out some of my other blogs about my adventures in CrossFit:
Adventures In CrossFit: Why I made the switch
