Every morning when my alarm goes off I’m faced with the same decision: exercise or more sleep? And it doesn’t seem to matter how much or how little sleep I get the night before, it’s always a gamble what I’ll choose! So far, I have been averaging 3 hours of exercise during the week, I only count during the week because weekends seem to be easy for exercise. If I had to guess what helps get me out of bed I would say:
- My clothes are in the bathroom so I don’t have to move around in the bedroom
- I set the coffee pot the night before, even if I don’t drink it the smell gets me up
- I have a plan set the night before as to what I’m going to do for exercise
- I’m ok with completely changing above plan in the morning if I want something different! Hey, at night a long run sounds incredible. At 5 am, a shorter run that allows me to go back to sleep until 5:30 sounds like a much better plan. And other mornings I may just go downstairs for 20 minutes and do a routine using my resistance bands and bodyweight. Any exercise is better than no exercise so I don’t judge myself if I cut things shorter than originally planned.
- Make plans with a friend (I don’t let myself put my phone on sleep mode at night so I’m awakened by texts in the morning from a friend I run with. If she’s up, I tell myself I don’t have a choice and just get up.)
What helps you get up and make the decision to exercise in the morning? If you get up early, what’s your favorite form of exercise to do in the AM? Do you prefer something of a higher-intensity? Or do you prefer to gently wake yourself up with something like yoga or walking?