START WITH A WIN

 

First, I know for a fact I’m not the first person to come up with this idea, but I’m writing this at 0540 on a day off of work after having gotten up at 0330 to crush the Kalsu WOD with 135lb log viper presses, so I’m living this as it’s being written, and I think that’s pretty cool.  Why do I train first thing in the morning when given the chance?  It’s not because I love training so much that I can’t wait to do it: quite the opposite.  I HATE training.  It just looms over me as a specter, always there, always present, and it will never go away and die. It’s something I HAVE to do if I want to achieve my goals, which in turn means it’s not something I’ve ever loved.  What I love is being able to spend time with my family, and training takes AWAY from that…unless I get up before they do and get it done.  And that’s why I do it, because even though I might FEEL better training on a full stomach, later in the day, properly warmed up and psyched up and built up, I won’t be able to actually do the things I love because I tried to make a bad situation better vs letting it be as bad as possible.  I started by day with a win by doing the thing I hated FIRST, getting it knocked out, crushing it and moving on.

And if you can make it as one-sided as this, even better

 

I do the same thing with my nutrition.  In fact, I DID the same thing with my nutrition.  I make my breakfast BEFORE going to bed.  These days, it’s 2 whole organic free range eggs, a slash of egg whites, 2oz of some sort of grassfed beef (typically ground, but I had some stew meat recently that was amazing), half an avocado, a little grassfed butter and some fat free cheese.  I cook it up like an omelet the night before, put it in a glass sealed container, wake up and zap it in the microwave, then throw it on an eggwhite wrap with some organic sunbutter and chow it down in about 4 minutes.  Sometimes I’ll have a keto waffle or pancakes on the side with a little more sunbutter.  It’s a substantial amount of calories and a lot of healthy fats and protein first thing in the morning, and typically I have my last bite about 5 minutes before my first warm-up set of the day, so it’s not really even fueling the workout.  But what it DOES do is set me up for success for the rest of the day.  If I get busy at work, or if the family decides they wanna do some all day adventure out and about and I have to live off protein bars and beef jerky for the next 18 hours, at least I got in a great source of nutrition at the start of the day.  I’m not playing catch up. 

 

And that’s fundamentally the message I want to spread with this: start your day off with a win.  How we begin our day can often dictate how it ends, and if we start off scrambling, behind the power curve, flummoxed, blind sided and baffled, we set ourselves up to effectively waste the next 24 hours, which, in turn, sets up a viscous self-perpetuating cycle.  In turn, you’ll note that often, starting off with a win means preparing yourself BEFORE you start.  I wrote about how I make my breakfast the night beforehand so it’s ready to go.  I do the same thing with my meals for the day: I prepare them in the afternoon or evening before, so they’re good to go.  Some people even prepare food for the whole week: that’s cool too.  My workout clothes were set up for me this morning to grab and go.  I have a home gym, and one of my favorite meditative rituals is setting up the equipment for the morning workout the evening before, so that I roll in and it’s ready.  Hell, what inspired this post was that, after my workout this morning, I slid my weightlifting shoes off my feet while the laces were still tied, and then I carefully untied them so that, the NEXT time I came in to train, I wouldn’t have to do that: they’d already be ready for me.  Because AFTER the workout, I have all the time in the world to deal with shoelace knots, but there’s nothing worse than when you’re scrambling for time and get a knot in your shoelace.

Especially true if you're working with these...and a million bonus points if you get this reference

 

And this extends to the microlevel as well.  I train first thing in the morning because I hate it and I just want to get it done and, in turn, I know I’m not going to SKIP training if it’s what I do first thing.  You can’t skip the first thing because…well…it’s the first thing.  So why not also do that IN your training?  Is your conditioning bad?  Do you do your conditioning at the END of your workouts?  Which is to say, do you frequently do your workouts and skip conditioning?  Do it first.  “But won’t my workouts suffer if I do conditioning first?!”  Aren’t your workouts ALREADY suffering because your conditioning is poor?  Your body will EVENTUALLY adapt if you do conditioning first, but it will NEVER adapt to you NOT doing conditioning: it will just continue to suck.  Weak abs?  Always skipping ab work?  Do it first.  I’d EVEN allow doing it in between your main work, but either way: start with a win.

 

Works for nutrition too.  Not eating enough veggies?  Eat them first.  Start your day with a salad.  I start my day with such a high fat meal because I had cut out WAY too many fats in my diet chasing after lower LDL numbers, and forcing myself to have a high fat meal first thing in the day meant there was no way I’d skip out on that.  Not enough protein?  Start your day with a protein shake.  That was my breakfast for the LONGEST time coming up, and then I’d have some real food an hour later.  I’d start my day with a win and get some protein in after an 8 hour fast. 

Still a better choice than some of these bad boys...and yes, I DID used to eat these thinking they were a "good choice"

 

And with this, we come all the way around to “get to yes”.  Strategize HOW you will start with a win.  You have NO idea how frustrated I am when I read someone say they don’t have enough time in the morning to eat breakfast.  This legitimately requires waking up FIVE minutes earlier than usual.  Who is operating off of such a shoestring time budget that they don’t have 5 minutes to spare?  And that same 5 minutes is time that could be spent doing Tabata burpees, for those that don’t have time for conditioning, which is ANOTHER fantastic way to start your day with a win.  I have, no joke, rolled right out of bed and set the Tabata app on my phone to go and knocked out burpees in my socks and underwear first thing in the morning just to get it done and move on with my life.  Funny enough, when you start your day with THAT kind of “win”, the kind of win that REALLY sucks, it makes the rest of the day seem SO much more awesome by comparison. 

 

Don’t try to build to a win: start with one, and let the rest of the game unfold from there.