How to Develop Your Morning Movement Ritual for Optimal Health

Executive Summary:

• How you’re currently starting your morning is throwing off the rest of your day, not to mention killing your health.
• As the saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything. So, it’s time restructure your morning to be in-line with how you want to live the rest of your day.
• Utilize the Morning Movement Practice to take control of your morning and put yourself in a stronger state throughout the day.
• Your MMR will improve your health, increase productivity, and clear your mind of any incoming distractions.
• The MMR practice is built around 3 key factors: Movement, Breath andMindful-awareness.
• Start to build your own MMR by choosing 2 static stretches, 2 dynamic stretches, and 2 bodyweight exercises.
• For static stretches, do 5 full breaths as you hold the stretch. To build awareness, bring your attention back to the breath any time the mind wanders.
• For dynamic stretches, do 5 repetitions of each movement. Take a full breath for every repetition you complete. Again, build awareness.
• Lastly, for bodyweight exercises, follow the same pattern as dynamic stretches, completing 5 repetitions, with a full breath being done within each rep. AWARENESS!
• Do your MMR first thing in the morning…yes, first thing! And skip the snooze button. That’s where you’ll find the extra 5 minutes to complete your practice.

Time is one of our most valuable assets. Actually, time is our MOST valuable asset. This is because, of the resources we possess in life, time is the only one of importance that is non-renewable. Therefore, how we spend our time is indicative of what is important in our lives (if you haven’t thought of time management in this way, I suggest you start doing so).

However, many of us struggle to incorporate all of the important things in life because we struggle to manage our time effectively. While time management in and of itself is a story for another post, today I want to talk specifically about how you can start to incorporate small bits of movement into your day in order to take drastic steps forward in your overall health.

Why am I starting this article with the notion that most of us are bad time managers, then? Because, in my work as a Fitness Coach at my facility, Thriveology, one of the most common arguments I hear for not exercising is lack of time.

Luckily enough, as I mentioned, today you will get a first-hand education on what it takes to build in 5 to 10 minutes of movement at one of the most important parts of the day, and that’s in the morning. But before we get to that, let’s talk a little bit more about your current morning routine and how that’s having an impact on your health.

How Your Current Morning Routine is Killing Your Health

Have you ever heard the saying “how you do anything is how you do everything”? I first heard this line from Bedros Keuilian on an episode of his podcast. When I heard him say this line, a thought clicked in my head. The thought?

Am I starting my morning the way I should in order to perform as well as I can for the rest of the day?

Because, if I’m not, then I’m not going to perform at my best. Because how you do anything is how you do everything.

To help you understand this concept a little more, let’s take a look at what your typical morning might entail. To start with, most mornings are ruined the night before…

If you’re like most people, you’ve spent your night binge watching some show on Netflix or Facebook-stalking your friends to see how they’re doing (AKA comparing your life to their fake, digital life). This leads you to go to bed at, say, midnight, which leaves you nice and groggy when the alarm goes off the next morning.

After you’ve hit the snooze button 5 times, you finally role out of bed, just in time to get cleaned up, throw on some clothes, and grab a cup of coffee on your way out. As you throw your shoes on, you notice a slight twinge in your back. Which is nothing new, of course, because your back has bothered you on and off for the last couple of years.

Finally, you jump in your car, coffee in hand, and hustle to work, honking, screaming, and shouting at every driver that gets in your way on your journey.

Needless to say, this may not be exactly how your morning goes. However, this little parable is far from unusual. And, as you can imagine, starting your day like this simply sets the tone for poor habits the rest of the day.

For instance, because you waited until the last minute to get out of bed, you’re already in a hurry from step one. This puts your mind in panic mode for the rest of the morning as it’s constantly trying to play catch-up along the way.

Also, in getting up and quickly throwing yourself together, you didn’t give your nervous system, muscular system or brain time to wake up and prepare for the day ahead. So, you’ve essentially put your body into a sympathetic state, otherwise known as fight-or-flight mode, right from the bell.

As good as it might feel to hit snooze 5 times in the morning, you’re hurting yourself much more by staying in bed until the last minute and not preparing your mind and body for the work that is coming up. This is why, instead of continuing to go down this path of morning-destruction, I encourage my clients to incorporate what I call a Morning Movement Ritual, or MMR, to get their day off on the right foot

What a Morning Movement Ritual Can Do to Improve Your Health, Productivity, and Longevity

The concept of the MMR came after I heard Bedros mention that simple line. Do you remember it? How you do anything is how you do everything. And since I wanted to make sure that I started my morning the way I wanted to live the rest of my day, I wanted to figure out what it took to do so.

Essentially, your MMR is a way to take control of your morning. It’s a way to create purpose and meaning to those first few moments of the day before life gets hectic and out of control. Because we all know that things pop up that are out of our control. So, if we can start our day in a controlled manner, we’ll be less likely to be thrown off course when those uncontrollables hit if in the face.

By creating your MMR, you will start to see a few drastic things happen in your life:

• First, you will feel your energy improve. And I don’t mean just a little bit. I mean drastically.
• Second, you will see your productivity at work go up. Because you will be in a more controlled mental state, you will be more able to focus on the things that matter.
• Finally, you will notice your psychological state is much more relaxed and positive. Again, starting the day in control will help you let go of the uncontrollables throughout the day.

As you can see, having an MMR can do much more for you than simply improving your health. But enough of that jazz. I’m sure you’re wondering what, exactly, a Morning Movement Ritual is and how you can set yours up so you can achieve these wonderful results as well. Okay, then, let’s jump right to it.

How to Develop Your Own Morning Movement Ritual for Optimal Living

To begin, I want to tell you what the MMR is so you can have an understanding of its function. Your MMR is a morning practice that incorporates 3 important factors, all of which will help you create the mental, anatomical and physiological states that will lead you to having a fantastic day. Those 3 key factors are:

• Movement– As the name implies, movement is the foundation of your MMR. Without regular movement in our lives, we wither away and die. Okay, that’s a bit drastic,but not as drastic as you might think. Movement in the morning is especially good for prepping the body for proper form and posture throughout the day. It also helps to loosen up all of those creaky, stiff joints.
• Breath– Many of us have poor breathing mechanics. Part of this is from poor posture and part of this from living in that sympathetic state we talked about earlier. Poor breathing mechanics leads to low oxygen levels in the body. When this happens, the brain, muscles, and nervous system cannot function at their highest capacities. This is why training your breath first thing in the morning is optimal for creating that strong state for the rest of the day.
• Mindful-awareness– One of the things we struggle with as a society is being aware of our surroundings. Obviously this is a pretty general statement, however, considering we spend more time with our noses in our phones than we do talking with real, living humans nowadays, it should go without saying that we could stand to be more aware. Combining movement and breathe in the morning will naturally increase your awareness of what’s going on with your body. Your goal is, then, to increase that awareness to another level, so that you can carry it forward throughout the day.

Now that you know the factors that we’re going to incorporate into your MMR, let’s take a look at the nuts and bolts of the practice so you can start to put yours together and reap the benefits tomorrow morning.

As mentioned, the foundation of your MMR is movement. It is through movement that you will develop better breathing patterns and stronger mindful-awareness. The movements that you put into your MMR are up to you, however, there are few rules to follow:

#1) Use 2 static stretches — Without diving deep into fitness jargon, a static stretch is simply a stretch in which you hold a position for an amount of time. Think bending over and touching your toes. Pick 2 of your favorite static stretches to begin your MMR.

#2) Use 2 dynamic mobility stretches — If you’re staying still in staticstretching, for dynamic mobility, you will be moving a joint through a full range of motion (or ROM) to help loosen the muscles, tendons andligaments that attach to the joint. Think arm circles.

#3) Use 2 bodyweight exercises — This one should be pretty self-explanatory. However, when I say “exercise”, I’m not telling you to be prepared to get a workout in. We’re going to be using these exercises to develop proper form and posture for the morning. Some examples include pushups, planks and squats.

Okay, so, you know the movements that you need to pick in order to your MMR together. Now, it’s time to incorporate the breath and mindful-awareness to pull everything together. Just as before, there are a couple of rules to follow to get the maximum benefit out of each movement:

#1) For static movements, instead of holding the stretch for a certain amount of time, you’ll be holding for 5 full breathes. Just to be clear, here is how your breath pace should go: inhale through the nose for 3–4 seconds, exhale through the mouth for 6–8 seconds.

#2) For dynamic stretches, you’ll do 5 repetitions of whatever stretch you choose. However, for each repetition you must complete a full breath as described above.

#3) For bodyweight exercises, you will also be doing 5 repetitions. And, as with the dynamic stretches, you will complete a full breath within each repetition. If you’re doing something like a plank where you’re supposed to be holding for time, utilize the static movement protocol of holding for 5 full breathes.

Finally, to pull it all together, in order to bring mindful-awareness into the equation you simply have to maintain your focus on your breath for its entire duration. As simple as this sounds, this may be the most challenging part of the whole practice. In order for you to level-up or mindful-awareness in your life, you must first stand vigilant against the wondering first thing in the morning. So, as you are breathing through your movements, maintain your focus as well as you can. If you feel the mind start to wander, which it will, simply pull the attention back onto the breath without judging anything.

A few last-minute thoughts: first, as you might have guessed, you should do your MMR first thing in the morning. Not after coffee. Not after a shower. First thing! Also, this should only take you about 5 minutes, 10 minutes max. With that said, you need to eliminate the snooze button from you morning routine. That’s where you’re going to find the extra 5 minutes (remember when we talked about time management in the beginning? It all counts).

Developing this simple practice will go a long way in improving your health, increasing you productivity, and building a stronger mind. In corporate your Morning Movement Practice into every morning and, over time, you will start to see drastic changes take hold. Just remember, this is called a PRACTICE for a reason. You must do it every day, no matter what, forever. Because it is in the regular practice where you will find the skills and abilities you need in order achieve in life.