I tried doing early morning workouts for 30 days and it improved my sleep and eased my anxiety
It even made me more patient with my children
I’m naturally an early bird, but I do find that getting out of bed before my 7am alarm can sometimes feel impossible because I’m just too tired.
However, when I do get up earlier and exercise in the morning it sets me up for a good day.
With that in mind, I decided to set myself a new fitness challenge; to get up at 6am every day for 30 days to work out.
Now, I just needed a workout plan to keep me engaged.
Coincidentally, one of my favorite workout apps RWL had just released a new six-week plan called Sculpt—a combination of core work, strength training and boxing with workouts no longer than 25 minutes.
As someone who gets bored of doing the same exercises, this fun and effective mix was the perfect way to start my 30-day challenge. Here’s what I discovered.
I was more patient with my children
Weekday mornings usually involve waking up at 7am and immediately getting into action. I coax my two daughters out of bed while making packed lunches and trying to stuff some food in my mouth, all before we head out on the school run.
Getting up at 6am to work out while the family was still asleep transformed my mood and stress levels.
Having that time for myself—with no one asking me to do anything—was bliss, and the medicine I didn’t know I needed.
By the end of the first week, I noticed I was more patient with my children. By the second, I was practically skipping up the stairs to wake them up—a task that would usually fill me with dread because they are so hard to get out of bed.
By the end of the 30 days, mornings felt manageable again because I felt like I had woken up on my terms.
My anxiety dropped
Mornings are typically the time when I feel most anxious. My to-do list feels overwhelming; I tend to have a non-stop schedule from school drop-off to pick-up and I often panic about how I’m going to get it all done in time.
Early morning workouts really helped me with these intrusive thoughts. This could partly be down to the fact that exercise has been linked to improved regulation of mood-related neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA, which can help reduce anxiety.
Over time, exercise can also improve how the body regulates the stress hormone cortisol, so it’s a great way to start the day if, like me, you often wake up feeling anxious.
I felt these benefits almost immediately, and this carried on for the whole month.
I remember telling a friend, who I call every Monday for a pep talk, that I’d noticed I wasn’t feeling as worried as usual.
The shift was so significant that I am determined to keep up with my early-morning workouts. I just might get up a bit later than 6am on the weekends!
It fixed my sleep routine
When my daughters finally fall asleep—often way later than I want to go to bed—it feels like it’s my only chance to spend some time on things I like to do.
This phenomenon is known as revenge bedtime procrastination. It’s the act of deliberately sacrificing sleep to do things for yourself, because of an all-consuming schedule.
The trouble is, when you stay up too late, you are more tired and the demands of your schedule become even harder to handle.
I discovered this the hard way a few times when I stayed up too late watching Netflix or talking to my boyfriend on the phone. The next morning I could not get out of bed and snoozed until my old 7am alarm went off.
Setting a 6am alarm to work out really helped to knock that bad habit on the head because it forced me to create my own curfew of lights out by 10pm at the latest.
It sounds simple but it’s so effective. Giving myself eight decent hours of sleep not only meant I was more able to wake up, I also felt more rested than usual.
I felt energised throughout the day
Isn’t it amazing what sleeping for eight hours a day will do for your energy levels? Combined with my early morning workouts, I felt like I had been super-charged.
What I noticed most about exercising in the morning was that as well as feeling energized at the end of each session, that feeling fed into the day, helping me to stay focused and alert with tasks that would usually slow me down.
Again, this was a benefit of getting up early to exercise that I felt almost instantly. I’ve always known that exercise is an energy booster but this daily reminder was a reason to keep up with my new routine.
