If you’re not a morning person, getting up for any reason—let alone working out—before 10 a.m. can feel like a terrible ordeal. If, however, mornings are the best time to fit in a workout for you, it’s worth trying to reprogram your day to get it out of the way first thing. Of course, that brings us to how.
Assuming your sleep is on point, it’s still difficult to actually decide to abandon the comfort of your blankets to, say, go for a run. This is likely because of three reasons: you try to do too much too soon; you didn’t plan correctly; you failed to add in any positive reinforcement. Here’s how to fix that.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to start a new exercise habit is that they get very ambitious. Let’s run five, no, seven days a week! And do a strength training program four times a week! And hike during the weekends! The initial enthusiasm is commendable but ultimately dooms them because they do too much, too fast, relying solely on willpower to bulldoze their way through. Sethi recommends starting so small that you absolutely cannot fail to do it.
“You want your mornings to require no decisions whatsoever,” Sethi said. If you, for example, wake up with your gym clothes already on, you forego the whole decision-making dance around changing into them and you’re far more likely to commit to your workout.
Take it a step further and have a month-long plan all ready to go. Here’s a four-week sample plan to start building an exercise habit:
Day 1: Sleep in gym clothesDay 2: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 1 jumping jack.Day 3: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 5 jumping jacks.Day 4: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 5 jumping jacks, Do 1 push-up.Day 5: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 5 jumping jacks, Do 5 push-ups.Day 6: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 5 jumping jacks, Do 5 push-ups, do 1 air squat.Day 7: Sleep in gym clothes. Do 5 jumping jacks, Do 5 push-ups, do 5 air squats.Week 2:Increase daily from 1 set of 5 jumping jacks to 3 sets of 20 jumping jacks, 1 set of 5 pushups, 1 set of 5 air squats.Week 3:3 sets of 20 jumping jacks. Increase daily to 3 sets of 20 push-ups, 1 set of 5 air squats.Week 4:3 sets of 20 jumping jacks, 3 sets of 5 push-ups. Increase daily to 3 sets of 20 air squats.
Charles Duhigg, author of the bestselling The Power of Habit, has written that a habit is formed via this three-step process:
The short version of all this is, for an exercise habit to form it’s best to associate it with a positive reward. As an example, maybe you didn’t miss a single gym day this whole week. Why not treat yourself to the pair of shoes you’d been eyeing for a while? Or a spa day? Of course, the ultimate reward here would be visible, concrete results—looser-fitting pants, looking better in the mirror, pounds lost on the scale, etc—but those take time. Meanwhile, you can find suitable, non-food related rewards. (I say non-food related because making food a reward for exercising is an icky area.)
Also, note that none of this will be as effective as it could be if you’re not getting enough sleep. So before you even start to build an exercise habit in the morning, get plenty of those Z’s in.
