Tag Archives: exercise routine

6am Gym Goers

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I’ve been going to a gym, rather than doing home workouts, for about 5 months now. My usual time is to get there by 6am. One thing about the 6am crowd is that they are dedicated. You see all the same faces almost every day. And, you start to acknowledge the regulars when you see them. 

I always see one guy who paddles with a weight like he’s paddling a canoe. He does a lot of exercises I don’t really get… but he’s there every day doing his routine. There’s little miss cardio who attacks the elliptical for long periods and at a pace that I could never maintain. There’s the calisthenics dude that pushes his body to the max on every set he does, with an effort that I’d struggle to maintain day-after-day. There is the somewhat self-conscious overweight guy who keeps to himself, who works hard and ends his weight session on a stationary bike. There’s the old guy (I might call him that, but he’s probably just a few years older than me) who chats up everyone, and is always smiling. There is the girl who does RDL’s with such a perfectly straight back that I think you could use her back as an ironing board – impressive! There are two couples, the younger ones work out together, the older ones are obviously together but don’t spend a lot of time on the same machines and do completely different workouts. I could go on and on… because I don’t just see these people once in a while, there are there every weekday. 

I often wonder what their back stories are? What got them to be diehard gym goers who are so dedicated? What makes them push, what makes them commit to consistency? Showing up consistently and dedicating regular time to being healthy is a life changing habit. It doesn’t matter if a person is trying to build muscle, increase their max VO2, or just in maintenance mode. It doesn’t matter if they do exercises that make sense to me, or if they struggle with good technique, or if they lift way heavier or way lighter than me. These gym goers have one thing in common… they start their day in the gym. I tip my hat to the 6am gym goer crowd. 

It’s 6am, let’s go!

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We’ve fully reached the stage of finding reasons to go rather than finding excuses not to. I’m not available this weekend to do our weekly walk up the Coquitlam Crunch, so Dave and I met in darkness at 6am to start our trek up the hill.

I’d say we reached this stage a full year ago. It was 2025 that we went from our commitment to doing the climb at least 40 times a year, matching the weeks of a school year, to ensuring we never missed a week. This wasn’t a voiced decision, it’s one we just found ourselves doing.

Now it’s something we just do… And yet it’s a lot more than that!

It’s a chance to to talk, to rant, to seek advice, to share, to listen, to connect.

It’s a commitment to a friend.

We now regularly meet at 6am for workouts anyway, and we often do multiple crunches at a time training for Everesting the Crunch, so to meet on a cold Thursday morning and just go up and down the Crunch once, actually feels like a rest day.

To pick up, put down

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We’ve heard this all before regarding habits, goals, and projects: Before you pick something new up, you need to put something else down.

The conference I went to back in October was led by Simon Breakspear who shared his Pruning Principle. He guided us to ask, “What is on my ‘Stop Doing’ list? What can I Delay, Delegate, or Dump?”

Adding a gym membership has been great, but it has come at a cost. The 15 minute commute each way means I’ve lost 30 minutes of time from my morning routine. I also spend a bit more time at the gym compared to my home workout. The question I now find myself asking is what am I going to give up to make up that time. I already get up at 5am and moving that to 4:30 would not be a healthy option for me.

I’ve decided that I’m dumping my online distractions. I’m leaving behind Wordle, Strands, and an online game that I usually play. I’m also doing zero social media in the mornings. Even 5 minutes can detract from a longer stretch or cardio workout. I’m keeping my Daily chess puzzle (while doing my bathroom duties), but not allowing any other online distractions in the morning.

I’m not sure that will be enough, but I also started writing this post last night and that’s going to help a lot too. Often the longest part of my morning is coming up with an idea to write about. If I get my idea started in the evening, that’s probably going to be the biggest contributor to not feeling rushed in the morning. I know online time in the am is also a huge distraction, especially when I’m stuck coming up with an idea. I’ll often distract myself online which is more of a delay than it is ever an inspiration.

While my gym membership has only been for a month, and two weeks of that were holidays, I know that adding the membership to my morning routine has been disruptive and unsustainable without a change. I need to prune distractions from the things in my routine that really matter.

Slow to go

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My resting heart rate will often drop to around 50bpm when I’m lying down and below 55 when sitting still for a while. I just checked my pulse on my watch and sure enough it’s showing 55bpm right now. When I don’t start my day with exercise, like today, I find it hard to kickstart my day. It’s almost 6pm and I haven’t done 1,700 steps yet.

The good news is that I’m about to get on my exercise bike and that will get me going. It’s the holidays and I don’t mind having a lazy day, but this is a good reminder that morning exercise doesn’t just invigorate me, it prepares me for a far more active day.

Essentially, I’m like an old car, needing a bit of time to warm my engine up… slow to get going but reliable as can be once I’m on a roll.

Doing hard things

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My workouts have stagnated a bit recently. I’m doing the minimum, but the good news is that I’m still showing up. Yesterday I did my first interval training in about 3 or 4 weeks. I want to do it weekly, but I haven’t made it part of my routine yet.

The reason I haven’t made interval training part of my regular schedule yet is embarrassingly simple: It’s really hard. The purpose of doing intervals is to maintain and improve my Max VO2 levels. To increase Max VO2, I need to not only do intervals, but do them at a very physically taxing level. That’s hard to do when just showing up is a challenge for me right now. But yesterday was a day off work and so I used the day as an opportunity to get an interval workout in.

I did a warm-up then eight 1-minute sprints. My sets are actually 1:15 hard and 1:10 easy, because it takes about 13 seconds to get my treadmill from my easy recovery speed to full sprint and I want the sprint to be a full minute. It’s not fun, but it’s much easier than the Norwegian Protocol which is four 4-minute sprints with 3-minute rest intervals. And I think that’s going to be my ticket to get back into regular intervals. When a task is hard to do, break it down into something more manageable. I can talk myself into 1-minute sprints even when I’m not feeling fully motivated… four 4-minute sprints feels like torture right now.

Through all this I’ve still been very consistent with my zone 2 training, but I think even that has not been ideal. I’m not sure how effective I’ve been because I haven’t been tracking my heart rate and so I’m not certain if I’m getting and staying in the zone. That’s changing this month, when I buy myself a Garmond watch, then I’ll really be able to track my cardio workout progress. I’m hoping the extra data will help motivate me to push myself.

When consistently doing hard things, maintaining motivation is important. I’ve become a master at showing up. My dedication to my workout habit is unwavering. Last year I did 326 workouts, and I’m on schedule to be around that total this year. I know how to show up! But if I were to rank myself on an intensity scale, this year would be much lower than last year. So my focus is to finish the year hard and strong. And I’m fortunate that I’ll have the tools to help track this. It benefits no one to lie to myself about how hard I’m working, and so the extra data the watch will give me will both inform me, and keep me honest about my progress.