Get Your Body Moving

I woke up this morning and you know what that means.

Get the coffee brewing and the body moving.

10 Hindu squats

10 glute bridges

10 dead bugs

10 pushups

I'm a big fan of quick little workout snacks throughout the day. Often I do them without structure – just going based off what I feel like. But, my “first-thing-in-the-morning” workout snack – which I call my morning recharge – is a little different in that I always do the same 4 exercise variations every morning within 30 minutes of waking. It takes less than 5 minutes. It’s like a physical exercise shot of espresso before I drink my coffee.

I pair this recharge and any other quick workout snacks with my more traditional, 20-30 minute hypertrophy training sessions that I do most days – 4-6 days per week.

My legs are sore today. They're always sore for 1-2 days after training legs. You probably understand the feeling. The Hindu squats and glute bridges are always slightly less tempting early morning, a day after a leg session. But, it's only 10 reps of each – easy to do – and I find the big ranges of motion and the light movement gets blood flow into the sore muscles and it might even help escalate recovery. At least it helps for me to tell myself that it does.

If you adopt a similar morning recharge routine, I encourage you to make it pretty easy. What I specifically mean is: don't do as many bodyweight squats as you can muster and max out pushups every morning. This is NOT intended to be a proper “training session.” It's a recharge and movement practice based around 4 exercises. The reps should be much lower than your maximum ability and you should be able to use perfect form without jacking the heart rate up very high. Movement and blood flow are the name of this early morning recharge game.

Make it easy to do so that you actually do it every day.

Reduce friction to increase consistency.

Save your intense efforts for your lifting/resistance training sessions later in the day – whether you lift in the morning, afternoons, or night time.

And no, these recharge sessions are NOT excuses to skip out on lifting or bodyweight hypertrophy training (or whatever forms of resistance training you prefer). 

The recharge sessions are a totally separate, supplemental piece to a healthy lifestyle, in the same vein as our daily walks outside.