Working out first thing in the morning = total focus and energy throughout the day. Working out any other time – even an hour or two after waking up and bam, no go. Not that exact same affect. I’m still playing w/ this and tightening up my experience with it, but it was a revelation late last summer or early fall ( 2019 ).
This should be titled working out first thing in the morning. Recently I’ve been playing around with running or biking first thing in the morning. This past summer..I think it was this past summer. Or early Fall…I rode first thing with a few guys who biked at 6,630am. Way too early for my blood traditionally. I’m a get up and have coffee and write or work or peruse or whatever. Lean into the day easy. BUT…I have difficulty staying focused throughout the day, and this exercise of getting up & FIRST THING working out changed my entire day. No naps. Total focus. Working right through – blazing right through that 2pm, 3pm slump. It was a revelation. So what happened?
I’m not sure. A couple things. One is that traditional discipline, slacked off on it, etc. BUT…there was another aspect to this as well, and I believe that is running. I mentioned above biking. If I bike around Mercer Island – lets call it 20 miles door to door – at a fairly brisk speed, I was having this affect – total focus and energy throughout the day as if I was on something. Amazing! Why aren’t more people doing this. That type of thing. But if I ran…if I jogged in the morning…lets call it…45 minutes. 4-5 miles. Fairly brisk but not sprinting, of course. Let’s call it a 9 minute mile with some hills. It just wasn’t having the same affect. Sure, I felt better. But it wasn’t the same.
So why not just ride…20 miles or what accounts to roughly an hour and 20 minutes on the bike? I think time. I’m not sure. But the affect was amazing the few times I did it.
This is the power of writing. You see your bullshit on the page. This seems pretty…pretty hazy. Not sure, this and that, pretty hazy. So if I run do I get those benefits? Not really. If I ride, do you get those benefits? I think so. I have in the past, yes, but I’ve also ridden and not gotten those benefits – total focus and energy throughout the day. Did you ride that same course as hard as you did when you rode w/ that group? Not sure. I don’t know. Haven’t done it enough to know. Pretty sloppy here. But I can see it with writing. Awesome. The hard part is taking the action to figure that out now.
The point of this was…working out first thing gave me those benefits – focus and energy throughout the day. Oddly, working out ANY OTHER TIME did not give me those benefits, even biking 2-3 hours. Yes, I got other benefits – emotional stability and strength and confidence. Probably better sleep, but that one isn’t so obvious. Generally feel much better. But not the total energy and focus sustained throughout the day if I even wait a couple hours after waking up. First thing and boom, the magic happens.