How to become a morning exercise person

You don't have to catch worms to enjoy the merits of being an early bird. Exercising in the morning has many advantages; so, it's worth rearranging your daily schedule to fit it in. Here's why and how to give it a go.

It's winter - the perfect season to start the day with exercise. A 30-minute session is doable before breakfast, and morning exercise offers these great benefits:

It helps keep you mentally alert during the day
Research shows that exercise boosts blood flow to the brain, increasing the functionality of neurotransmitters involved in your brain's reasoning processes. This boost in brainpower can help you think faster and clearer during those long morning meetings and enhance your productivity throughout the day.

Exercise puts you in a better mood
When you start exerting yourself during exercise, your body releases hormones such as serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. These help regulate your mood, energy, motivation and attention. Exercise also releases endorphins, which help relieve pain and stress.

"In fact," says Discovery Vitality biokineticist Mari Leach, "it's been proven that people who exercise regularly, have lower depression and anxiety levels than their less active counterparts. Studies have also found that people prone to high anxiety but who are very active, are less likely to panic when compared to those with low activity levels. "So, hopefully, morning exercise can help you handle the rest of the day's stressors better, be it traffic or normal workday frustration."

It can help develop consistency and strong self-discipline
Scheduling your exercise session in the afternoon or evening makes it easier to procrastinate or cancel entirely. Your calendar can fill up quickly - other tasks take priority, or often it seems too tiring to train after a day's work. When you work out in the morning, you prioritise your health, and exercise becomes one less thing on your to-do list for the rest of the day.

Exercise boosts your metabolism
A study that looked at the effect of a 45-minute vigorous intensity exercise session, showed a significant elevation in post-exercise energy consumption that could last for up to 14 hours. This means that by putting in a solid exercise session in the morning, you'll burn more kilojoules throughout your day, and this can help you lose weight faster.

It's all good and well to know that morning exercise is beneficial, but putting words into practice can be difficult. While anyone can find excuses not to do it, it's worth the effort.

Mari's top 8 tips to becoming a morning exerciser

1. Eat a healthy meal the night before to ensure you have enough energy for your morning workout.
2. The blue light that LED screens give off can slow or stop the production of melatonin, the hormone that tells our brain that it's time for bed. Use a blue light filter on your phone in the evenings and stay away from bright lights and screens at least an hour before bedtime - this will help shut down your melatonin levels so you can fall asleep faster.
3. It's obvious - go to bed earlier. Lying in bed isn't good enough if you're still watching or reading something. Ensure your bedroom is as dark and quiet as you can manage, try clear your mind, and take a few deep, full breaths to help you drift off faster.
4. Set out your exercise clothes the night before.
5. Ease into the habit of morning exercise by scheduling sessions on alternate days. Then start moving more sessions to the morning as you get used to the routine.
6. Give yourself one morning a week to sleep in for a while and work out in the afternoon, if you really struggle with repeated morning wake-up calls.
7. Don't press snooze on your alarm. Position your alarm on the other side of the room, forcing you to get up from bed to switch it off. When it wakes you, don't lie there debating whether to get up - the less you think about it, the better! Just heave yourself up and go. Or get yourself to just start dressing for the exercise - it gets you going and will oftentimes lead to following through with the exercise. And you'll feel much better afterwards to boot.
8. Remember to do a proper warm up at the start of your morning training session as your body temperature will be lower than in the afternoon.

Give morning exercise a go and you may surprise yourself with how quickly it becomes a happy norm. As author Brian Tracy once said, "You can make excuses, or you can make progress." So, resolve to make progress this winter by setting that alarm right away!