Early morning training.

"The heights of great men reached and kept,
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upwards in the night."
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I have never been very good at getting up early, however the early morning is (in my opinion) by far the most beautiful time of day. It is also the perfect time of day for exercise, so I have spent the past few weeks conditioning my mind and body into getting up early and fitting some training in before breakfast.

The most important step in getting up earlier is going to sleep earlier. It doesn't have to be a big change - I have brought my bedtime forward by about an hour, so I now go to bed at around eleven o'clock. Losing an hour at the end of the day hasn't affected me greatly at all. The final hour of the day is the least productive - it has just meant reading a few less chapters of a book or watching a shorter film (possibly Predator instead of Scarface).

The extra hour or so gained at the start of the day however has made a huge difference. I now set my alarm for 5:30 and by 5:45(ish) I am out of the house, having donned my training gear and downed a protein shake.

Variety is important. If I had been getting up early and doing the same thing every day I think the monotony would have beaten me. My early morning training is usually one of the following; 

• Aerobic endurance (either a steady paced run or intervals).
• Plyometrics followed by sprints (I have to do plyometric training early, when not too many people are about or I get some very strange looks as I jump around my local park).
• Weights session.
• Yoga.

One of the benefits of early morning training is the freeing up of time later in the day (the time after work spent in the gym or running can now be used elsewhere) and I don't know if this is true for other people but early morning training sessions seem to be a lot more effective than sessions later in the day. This has to be purely psychological and I put it down to the fact that training early in the morning makes me feel like Rocky!