Morning training

I love to work out in the morning. I would have never thought that I'd become a morning person, but due to my morning workouts I started to slowly slip into some kind of routine where I'm going to sleep at about 10-11 pm and get up somewhere around 6 and 7 am. 

It started when I started the Tone It Up -Regime a few months back where you are supposed to do some light Cardio in the morning 3-4 times a week to get your metabolism going. I started sometime in May with 30min running sessions. Then I figured out that our gym had morning classes and did some yoga on some days. Now that autumn is upon us and brought temps like -3°C with it, I really don't feel like running anymore, but thanks to one of my favourite instructors, there is a new morning workout that made it into my weekly schedule. Atm my mornings look like follows: Monday MMA HIIT, Tuesday is mostly my recovery day, Wednesday MMA HIIT, Thursday has still been a running day, but I'll come to this later, Friday GRIT Plyo, Saturday Body Pump and/or Combat and Sunday I sleep in. 

Morning training sessions or workouts or actually anything you do to move your body in the morning are an effective way to wake up your body, to rev up your metabolism and you are really awake afterwards. But the best part: you still got the whole day ahead of you and if you don't feel like it, you don't have to do anything sports related in the afternoon. :) Okay, the last point doesn't really do it for me, but I know some people who are busybodies and like to spend their afternoons meeting people, doing things. My afternoons normally mean another training session, seeing that I got MMA-training three times a week, I like my Sunday workout that consists of CX WORX, GRIT Strength and most Sundays a Body Combat in addition to these. And Thursdays are actually Body Combat days. 

But back to today; after MMA practice yesterday I felt like my body had been going through a wood chipper or sth similar, it hurt so bad. Every muscle was sore minutes after the training was over and I won't even start on the bruises. It's part of the game so there's no complaining and usually I like this kind of pain, where there's nothing left to do but take a hot shower, go to bed, role up into a fetal position and hope you don't move so it doesn't hurt so bad. Most mornings, I wake up feeling okay. I had a feeling yesterday that today would be different. Oh, and it was. I was actually hurting even more than in the evening and most of my joints were incredibly stiff. For a moment I lay in bed and thought about my options. Going for a run? Hell no! Dying? Might actually be more pleasant than this... but then I remembered that there was a "Rise&Shine" class in the morning that contained a warm up, soft muscle conditioning moves (not the kind of stuff you do in a toning class, but toned down, flowing, soft movements) that got your muscles softer and open and then half an hour of stretching. Afterwards I spent about 15min in the sauna and now I'm feeling a lot better. I can move without pain, my joints are flexible again and breathing doesn't hurt anymore. Definitely going there again. 

So even if you're not a morning person, just try it maybe a few times, it doesn't have to be anything hard or exhausting, maybe get up 15min earlier and do a little yoga routine like this one: