An overwhelming amount of people have told me that they don’t have time to workout, lose weight, or get fit. Truth be told, no one has time to do it.
We live in an age where most people (at least those who make some sort of contribution to this society rather than sucking off the system) are busy as hell. Statistics have shown that Americans put in more hours per week than any county in the world and over 40% of the American work force puts in more than 50 hours per week.
What if you’re a family man?
Unless you are an absent husband or father, having a wife and children demands your time as well. This is especially true if you have small children or a baby.
In this day in age it’s a struggle to get caught up on the latest episode of the walking dead, let alone put in the time and consistency it takes to transform a human body.
I once heard someone say that the only thing that we know that is completely certain in life is…time.
Just how in the hell is that even possible?
Well unless we somehow meet an untimely demise, we absolutely know that there are 24 hours that make up every day. If you know how much time you have, this gives you something to work with.
I saw a YouTube video years ago where someone was interviewing Arnold Schwarzenegger while he has still the governor of California and they asked him if he still worked out. His answer was “absolutely”. He said that he has to wake up early every morning to make this happen because if you do it later in the day, that is time that other people and things are going to try and take away from you.
So here is a guy well in to his 60s with a no doubt demanding job, who at the time was still maintaining a marriage with 4 kids in the house, doing constant interviews, and still writing articles for fitness magazines while still maintaining a daily fitness routine. Whether you love him or think he is an absolute pig, you have to admire that he still finds time to workout every day. I know someone is going to say “well that’s a shitty example because he was a professional bodybuilder, so it comes easy for him”. Keep in mind that he retired from bodybuilding in 1980, which was 35 fucking years ago and getting up early in the morning to workout doesn’t come easy to a single person on this planet no mater what your fitness level is. So if he can do it, we all can.
I have a pretty demanding 10 hour a day job as well as a wife and kid and I workout almost every morning because that is the only way I can make sure it gets done. I’m not going to lie, it was a huge undertaking to get in a habit of crawling my ass out of bed at 4:40 in the morning rather than just hitting the snooze button over and over again. When I first crawl out of bed I feel like a big pile of shit and the last thing I really feel like doing is lifting weights and pouring sweat for an hour. So here is how I force myself to make it happen every morning…
-I have a cheap $3 alarm clock that I bought at the dollar store and it stays in the hallway and not the bedroom. That way my ass has to physically get out of bed and turn it off. Lets face it, actually getting out of the bed is the hardest part of the whole thing. If the alarm clock isn’t two feet away from your bed, it is a physical impossibility to keep hitting the snooze button over and over again. If you don’t get out of bed and turn off the alarm clock that’s in the other room, I’m sure your significant other will provide with some verbal encouragement to do so.
-I get my workout clothes together the night before and set them on the night stand right next to the bed so they are ready to be put on as soon as I get out of bed.
-After I turn the alarm clock off, put the workout clothes on, and take a giant piss, I get some caffeine in my body. I always make Pre-workout or really strong ass coffee the night before and keep it in the refrigerator that way it ready to go every morning.
-After I chug that shit, I read a fitness magazine for motivation while I take my morning dump (we all have to do it sometime) and by the time I’m done , the stimulants have hit my system and I am officially woken up and ready to go. Or you can just start stretching until the caffeine kicks in.
-I almost always listen to music that is going to keep stimulated as well. For me, it’s usually some form of heavy metal depending on what the workout entails. If I have a brutal chest and back workout where I’m throwing around a bunch of heavy ass weights then I am probably going to be listening to something pretty extreme like meshuggah, suffocation, or Slipknot. If it’s a lot of cardio, p90x, or even high reps with lighter weights, I may tone it down a bit and go with iron maiden, Rush, or some 80s hair metal. Whatever keeps me in the zone!
The one thing you have to do to make this work is go to bed at a decent hour every night and get a solid 6 or 7 hours of sleep. You don’t need 9 hours of sleep to function. I am always in bed by 9:45pm throughout the workweek.
Like I said it took me a while to get consistent at this, but spending a few minutes the night before and having everything ready to go is really what made it possible for me. Do this; give it a solid month of getting up every morning and working out. Then, take a day off and see if you feel kind of sluggish throughout the day because I usually do when I go a morning without it. It usually sets the tone for my entire day.