Are you trying to wake up earlier in order to squeeze in a workout? You know the day is going to get busy — you have a full plate on your hand and you are juggling multiple things throughout the day. You have to take care of your newborn baby, prep all the food for the week, clean the laundry so your husband has clothes for work, and you need to vacuum all the dog hair up before you have guests visiting your house. When does your workout fit into the mix?

Usually, it doesn’t, and that’s why you need to work out first thing in the morning. But with a lack of sleep, it seems impossible. It’s quite the challenge but you can easily wake up 1 hour earlier if you follow this tip. Continue reading to learn more.

Healthy Habits Set You Up For Success

Having healthy habits is really what sets you up for success when it comes to working out. Healthy habits are hard to create or stick to when you are a new mom, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It takes small incremental steps in the right direction to create a healthy habit. Making choices in the wrong direction is what ruins the habit and prevents it from even forming. My favorite book about creating good habits is Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Having good habits will help us to be the best version of ourselves. If you believe it, then I want you to really hone in on making a habit focused on your morning workouts.

People Thrive When They Have Good Habits

Babies and kids thrive off of schedules and routines. They know at 1 pm after they wake up from their nap they will be breastfeeding. They know that’s what’s next on the agenda without you having to tell them what’s coming. You don’t have to verbalize it. Their body and their brains just know what you plan to do next because it’s a routine.

The same goes for adults. When you know what comes next in your morning routine, you can do it automatically without thinking. Automatically you know after you brush your hair, you will brush your teeth. After you brush your teeth you put on your make-up. After you put on your make-up you then get dressed. All 4 steps go together and you don’t have to think about it. You also have work-related routines that you do in the same order and sequence every day. These work-related tasks come naturally after you have been involved with the job for several months. You don’t have to work hard thinking about every task in your job.

Creating routines and habits is crucial for living a normalized, relaxed, and peaceful life that takes a lot of the thinking out of the day. If you want to wake up early and create a morning routine that takes less thinking, less stress, and less aggravation, then you want to create a healthy habit and routine first thing in the morning. Create a routine that allows you to work out before the day gets more chaotic.

How To Get Started With Creating An Early Morning Workout Routine

It’s easier said than done. You may be wondering how to even get started with creating this healthy habit of waking up early to work out. Here’s what you need to do to get started:

1. Know what your normal wake-up time is for your body. Your body naturally wakes up around the same time every day. This is your baseline wake-up time. Every day for 7 days, set your alarm for this time. Let’s pick 7:00 am for this example. Don’t sleep any later and try to create a sense of normalcy around this wake-up time.

2. After a week passes by, set your alarm for 1 minute earlier. It’s best to start this step on a Monday, the start of the week. The goal is to take 1 small baby step in the positive direction. The goal is to wake up earlier, not later, so it’s important that you do not sleep past your baseline wake-up time, which in this case was 7 am.

3. The next day, wake up 1 minute earlier. Now it’s Tuesday, and you are waking up at 6:58 am. It doesn’t seem like that big of a difference, but in time it will gradually get to be earlier and earlier. In this extra time, you should be waking up and making your bed.

4. The next day, wake up 1 minute earlier. Now it’s Wednesday, and you are waking up at 6:57 am. You should be waking up, turning around to make your bed and now you are walking to the bathroom to use the toilet.

5. The next day, wake up 1 minute earlier. Now it’s Thursday, and you are waking up at 6:56 am. You should be waking up, turning around to make your bed, walking to the bathroom to use the toilet and next you are putting on your workout clothes.

6. The next day, wake up 1 minute earlier. Now it’s Friday, and you are waking up at 6:55 am. You should be doing all the same things you did on Thursday and that’s it. Stick to this routine for the rest of the week because getting dressed is one of the hardest tasks before actually starting the workout. Once you are dressed, you are more likely to actually work out. Next week you will be ready for the real thing — the workout.

Creating a New Habit Takes Small Baby Steps

Interestingly enough, it took a whole week to just wake up 7 minutes earlier. It’s a slow process for sure. And, yes, you spent the entire week getting prepared to wake up earlier and work out, with no workout actually being accomplished. But that’s ok. We need to set a healthy and systematic morning routine in place from the get-go in order to have a consistent start to our workout routine.

You need to have a morning routine in place to facilitate the workout routine. If you want to wake up 1 hour earlier, you will need 60 days to accomplish this habit. Every day for 60 days you will need to subtract one more minute from your wake-up time.

Create a Calendar for Easy Tracking

This can be a tedious process, but it’s a process that will work! If you are serious about waking up 1 hour earlier, you need to get serious about all the baby steps leading up to this goal. The system and the routine are more important than the goal. Spend more time creating the system instead of studying and fixating on the goal itself.

Get your workout calendar out and write down the dates and the times you want to wake up each day in order to wake up at 6:00 am (for example). You may forget what time you woke up this morning. If that happens, simply refer back to your calendar and track your progress toward waking up 1 minute earlier every day for 60 days.

Get Support and Accountability

In the end, your body will adapt to the change easily because it’s a small change. A one minute difference in your sleep pattern will not be as shocking to your body. But a 30 minute adjustment is.

Join our free Facebook community of fitness-focused moms if you want to stay accountable. Get coaching with me, and I can help create a fitness plan for you that’s ideal for your body and your mommy lifestyle.

Keep Smiling,

Jena

Apple Podcast | Spotify | Google Podcast

Before you go, be sure to watch the free workshop!

This free workshop is for you if you want to strengthen your core postpartum in just 2 minutes a day.

It will teach you how to get started with your first postpartum ab workout using the #1 physical therapy exercise recommended for new moms, which is the safest and quickest way to recovery!