Beating the Morning Grogginess
Today I want to talk about how you can wake up early without feeling tired. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chef it? That is the question on this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Rowman Podcast. Hello you beautiful Roman! Welcome back to another roadman cycling podcast. Today the topic for my short form discussion is how to wake up early without feeling tired. If you're anything like me, I was the worst at getting out of bed. My mind literally used to have to drag me out of bed to go to school and probably why looking back my school at 10 interest rates were so so poor. I even used to try and walk the school and close my eyes I just couldn't shake that groggy feeling and we've all had that groggy feeling you know when you're getting up For a super early floyce and you just carried this groggy feeling which it all morning There's a couple of proven ways to offset that groggy feeling That's what I want to talk about this morning before I dive in roadman a quick word about the old beer phones The beer phone supports the podcast that doesn't support my drinking habits It's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony on their scorewatch You can buy me the price of a point to be here once a month to support the podcast and makes a real difference All men so please I would really appreciate you checking out that link pause on the podcast and headin over So the tree ways that I've found There's a bunch of them if you dig dig through the data You'll see all sorts of different studies about morning routines and you know I love morning routines but I wanted to isolate tree specific actions outside of the morning routine. Whether you decide to put these in and weave them around, journaling, grounding, cold therapy and all these things. Cool, that's even better. That's the next step. But I wanted to boil this back to something you can do really fast, getting your morning started, without taking up the first half an hour of your day. But I suppose before I even talk about how to shake off that groggy feeling or a morning routine. It's just a point to note, you actually don't have to be an early roiser to be successful or productive for these other labels that Instagrammers or YouTube put on it. People that have you believe that you have to be up at 4am in order to be a successful human, you don't. You can be super productive, get up at 10am and work super smart through the day and build employers, be a god, but it doesn't matter really what time you get up at. These are just principles to avoid the grogginess regardless of what time you get up with and I'm not gonna say sleep. It's so obvious that sleep is gonna stop you being groggy. If you get tree or sleep, I referenced time and time again, Matt Walker. He's a brilliant podcast that he just launched. That's worth checking out. But it's both quite weak sleep as well as brilliant. This isn't about sleep. This is like tangible strategies. So I'm a big fan of that Robin Charam by 5am club and I honestly think some of the lessons in it, although he paints them as time sense that if they're not time sensitive lessons they are practices you can incorporate at any time of the day. That's a good book to go back if you're looking for something to check out 5am by Robin Sharma. My kind of routine at the moment although people will say to you have to get up at the same time every morning I don't I get up at about 6 15 6 20 on Monday Wednesday Friday because I like to do some strength work on Monday Wednesday Friday and I get to the gym early and I get to the gym start the gym class at 7am and I'm home by a 30ish. So that's like my Monday Wednesday Friday, locked in. The rest of the day is in a week. I'm either getting up to work or I'm getting up to ride. So I don't get up normally till about half eight. So this isn't me being super smog and sayin' I'm up at 5am every morning the sun has never beat me out a bit.
Movement and Light Explained
That's not what it is. But what works super well and this is just a preparatory note before I get into these three elements is preparation the night before for the next morning. Whether that's for me preparing my gym kit or is preparing my training kit or it's laying out a diary or laying out a book or having a glance at my calendar and then what I'm going to do next morning. That works super super well. Right, let's dive into these three elements. I've pushed this off. They are movement, they are light and they're water. So I want to take each of them because they're very simple and you might be tempted to go, movement, light, no water, well fucking tanks a bunch, Anthony, I thought you were going to give me some mad concoction of of supplements and vitamins and minerals. But when you dig through, piles and piles of research, like I love just scrolling through PubMed. And so I've played around with a lot of these, you know, elements of morning routines. So these are based on research and my own anecdotal trial and error experience. But movement is super important because getting moving, as soon as you get out of bed, it sends a signal to your brain that it's time to wake up. That lethargic morning feeling, I can hang with you for hours if you're around the house, lounging on the couch without moving. But if you get out, you walk the dogs, get out even for a couple of k-run, you'll shake that groggy feeling almost instantly. For me, what I use is like a rebounder, a small indoor trampoline. I've been using that for a couple of years. One of the most effective ways to get moving in the morning. I love that. Moving to number one, lice is number two. Because our circadian rhythm is affected by lice. So when lice hits your eyes, it's gonna trigger the release of serotonin. And that's like a wake up hormone. So study after study has shown that light exposure, first thing in the morning, it's associated with improved sleep quality, that following night, and reduced time to actually falling into that deep sleep. But here's the kicker, it's not just any light. So what we're looking for is called Circurrion Effective Light. So this is a specific spectrum of light, and this isn't found in blue lights off, like your TV or your phone or your iPad. So you can't get up in the morning and throw on Netflix and think you're getting this spectrum of loyce, you're not. The very best way to get this spectrum of loyce is to get outside in the zone. That gives you the ideal perfect spectrum. Let it hit your skin without sun cream, bade it in. Now the problem is I live in Ireland and I'm living on the east coast of Ireland in Dublin. We get a lot of grey gloomy days for large parts of the year and we don't get the right spectrum of loyce penetrating that grey gloom. So I've had to science the shit out of it and I actually use a unit in my house called a Jew of unit, JOOV, if you want to check them out. And they replicate that circadian effect of light wavelength. So I can get that same wavelength of light without actually having to go outside. So getting that first thing in the morning becomes a knock on for the next day because you sleep better that night, you get to sleep faster. So you might think I'm a bit of a madman in the morning because I'm first thing on on the rebound or the mini trampoline and then I'm into this light units. And the last one I do is water. And I do actually do water first thing when I get up so I probably should have dealt with that first. But as soon as I get out of bed, I just routine. I just walk to the kitchen and I use water and Himalayan sea salt, about half a teaspoon into about trying to get between 750 ml and one liter of water into me. There's a bit of forest on Tanamo Bay, still a water board and to get that in you're at three 400 milliliters, you kind of want that and that's to toast but then I'm trying to squeeze it down after that but your body is craving water it's been eight plus hours without water and water is a super effective way to communicate to your body that you're actually awake and you have an ability to hydrate.
Hydration and Accountability Hacks
The impulse especially for cyclists is to reach for coffee for staying in the morning stimulants caffeine but this is literally the worst thing you can do because it's going to dehydrate you when you need to be hydrated. It's shocking. I bang on about morning routines a lot but if you're struggling together bed, a morning routine is a great idea but it's a date with yourself. So the problem with having a date with yourself is it's easy to break a date with yourself. So if you are struggling with it initially, a nice way to do it is it's schedule and meeting a friend. So if it's meeting that friend to go and walk the dog, meeting a friend to go to the gym, meeting a friend for a a group ride. I mean a friend even to go to the local coffee shop because you can get your movement on the way, you can get your light on the way and you can hydrate before you go there so you're free to get your coffee then. But having that date, you know, I'm meeting so and so at 8 o'clock, that's going to force you to hustle and get you out the door and that could be what you need to start this positive habit of motion and where you can change that from like a type 1 decision making process where it needs willpower to a type 2 decision making process where it becomes automated. about 40 days, you know, you're soping diesel then folks. Well, that's it. Three ways to guarantee to knock off that groggy edge in the morning. And they are move, get exposure to light and hydrate first thing in the morning. Row, man, thanks for listening. A great feedback to the Joe Distefinal podcast from last Wednesday. He's a biohacker and he gave us all sorts of kooky cool ways to biohacker physiology and the current mix between modern science and ancestral living. the podcast is amazing. If you haven't gone listen to it, go back and check it out. Off the back of that I'm actually going to get a couple more biohacking guests to have a couple that I'm super excited about. Over the next maybe two to three weeks. And also we're going to toy with the idea of dropping the podcast on video on YouTube and over on Facebook. That's going to be coming next week. But I'll give you more details of that road man Until then, ride safe, thanks for listening, do all the stuff that keeps us going, like, like and subscribing to the podcast, follow me over on Instagram, roadman.scycling, and share. And if you're listening to the podcast, screen capture, tag me in, add it to your stories and I'll re-share for you. Roadman, thanks for listening, ride safe, catch you on the road. Okay, stop what you're doing, it's Anthony again. I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the eight-week challenge. So for eight weeks I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. Whatever that is. For eight weeks I want to take you under my wing and I want to personally build for you a customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments so don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling, I went off and thought I was a really big businessman. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling, but I knew after a bit, to try it on a loan, it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system. It needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever, I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm going to give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I use, the cookbooks and recipes I use and even the motivational audios by listening to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time it's roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.