Row Man I've long spoken about the power of morning routines, but in…
Row Man I've long spoken about the power of morning routines, but in today's podcast, I want to tell you how you can create your own. 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 longevity? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Row Man Podcast. Roadman, welcome back, Roadman to another Roadman Cycling Podcast and this is a topic I am super excited about. This is again, obviously one of our short-form Roadman Bites podcasts. Yesterday we had the brilliant Brian Smith on. Brian is one of those voices that were just used to hearing. It sounds like chatting to an old family friend. So if you haven't listened to Brian, go on tip back and listen to that one. It's a bit longer, it's the full farm episode, it's the hour long one. But today I want to dive into, I've long talked about morning routine, what morning routine is, and I've talked about it a couple of days ago and I'll recap it again here. But what this podcast is, I want to talk to you about the elements of a morning routine. Because I've described it as tactics, if you think about a battle, so there's specific tactics we're going to take that bridge, but there's an overall strategy to win hearts and minds. That's what I want to talk about today. What's the overall strategy of my morning routine? And by knowing the strategy you can craft your own because you don't have the exact same circumstances mean you don't have the same things You enjoy doing as me, but I'll talk to you about why I do each of these things from an overarching strategic point of view and I think you're gonna be able to build yourself a really cool morning routine out of this Before I jump into it, let me just remind you about the roadman so much I'm gonna keep talking about it until the 8th of December because it's absolutely unreal amazing. So I want to announce two more guests. I had the amazing Tyler Hamilton on the summit and Tyler is someone who I just have so much respect for follow him all through his career and he's going to be joining us again on the summit and I'm not sure if I've already announced Tyler but nevertheless Sebastian Weber is the second guest I want to announce today. Sebastian and Weber is, he's been the forefront of coaching and spearheading the changes in coaching that we've seen over the last decade plus since the inception of the Power Meter, he was the head of performance in T-Mobile like in his mid 20s. And he's been involved in coaching, behind the scenes of some of the world's top writers like Cavendish, Ad Huyrow, T-Mobile, all since then. He's the founder of Inside Software, which is absolutely incredible. We are blessed to get such an amazing mind onto the summit. And yeah, it's another one worth tuning in for. So you get your tickets, grab them for free. It's over on roadmanseomet.com. And the reason I'm doing it's to put a smile on everyone's face and just like fuck COVID. Everyone's talking about it nonstop and I try to keep my references to it down. And anytime I do a reference, I try to use the word fuck before I fuck COVID. But there we go. So guys, the podcast, it's my passion at the moment. and I wanted to hear everything to turn it from a passion to a career. And if you'd like to be a part of that, if you'd like to be a part of the positivity around the summit, the way you can support this, it's true patreon. It's over on patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore Walsh. That's where you can go by me, the price of a beer once a month to say just thanks for the content. If you're getting some value out of the podcast, if you're listening to it in far-flung corners of the earth. The only man who is exempt from the patreon obligation is the boy in Kenya. He is the official roadman whoever that man is. Okay, let's dive into today's topic how to create a morning routine. I'll briefly recap my routine first. So even if I'm busy I'll just chop bits of this down. So I get out of bed and this changes all the time. So maybe you've heard a podcast two, three months ago and I had a slightly different routine.
Morning I rode at 8am so I got up at about 7, probably pressed news a…
This morning I rode at 8am so I got up at about 7, probably pressed news a couple of times, 7.15am and the first thing I done was grab myself a big point of water with some Himalayan salt, some lemon and some ice and I went and drank that in front of my dew of red light unit and that helped wake me up. The reason I used that it increases serotonin production that wake up feel good hormone also with vitamin D bang off it's straight away first thing in the morning which is awesome I do that then I get into my cold shower I come out I brew my coffee take my coffee into the table sorry while I'm doing the red light I get a little bit of meditation in while I drink my coffee I'll go to the table take my journal out I'll do some gratitude stuff on the journal identify my one thing in the journal like my big domino My big, you know, arkamidae is lever for the day. What's the main thing I'm looking to accomplish? I'll identify threats for today, like scrolling on social media, getting sucked into watching Netflix. Maybe it's a threat that some of you might perceive as positive for me. You know, I can write the bike all day sometimes, you know. So writing the bike, I'm not a pro bike rider. So writing the bike for six hours, you know, can undermine my productivity a lot because I come home and wreck, so that could be one of the threats. So I'll go through some of these things, I'll try and get a sample at your own entry with the headings for you guys at some point. But this podcast, I want to talk to you about the strategies I use. So let's dig into them. So it really starts the night before is when you need to get switched on and don't use a mobile phone as your alarm clock. Because if you use your mobile phone as an alarm clock, the first thing you're going to do is knock off the phone and then you're going to see WhatsApp notifications, email notifications, Twitter, etc. then you're in reactive mode. And it's the exact opposite reason that we have a morning routine because the morning routine, is our weight started a porpoisefully on our terms, create momentum. So looking at your phone straight away undermines a lot of that. So use an old-school alarm clock, put your phone powered off in another room. A great book actually, well, before I just dig into these strategies is Robin Sharma, Wind the Morning, Wind the Day. I think it's called, great book on morning routines and the power of them. And it's one of the ones that definitely helps shape morning routine. But the first thing you want to do is, are you like not even in a specific order? There's one of them that's in a specific order, which I'll flag. But I like to have one momentum event. So that's important for you. So an example of a momentum event is a little win, something you don't particularly want to do, but a little win that you can chalk up early in the day. So for some of you, it's make the bed straight away. The ex-Navy CEO, great motivational speaker, Jocko Wilick, he speaks about the importance of making the bed and coming back at the end of the day and looking at something they have accomplished. For me I love to do colds, that's my momentum event. Cold is my horrible thing, I don't want to do it. I'm in bed, I'm warm, I'm cozy, the last thing I want to do is get into a cold shower, so that's my momentum event. But you can have your own, it doesn't have to be either of those things. But do a small win, something that is I'm going to just be able to chalk it up in the yes I don't that column and this should be something you can accomplish in two three minutes. Ideally you don't want to dive into a task like I responded is email it's got to be something small it's got to be something. You know the bed and the shower a great examples of it. Next is a meditation element to it so. For me, I do this, I combine a wit red light for time efficiency. If you don't be judgmental, I'm recording the summit at the moment and you see so much snobbery around meditation. My way is right, your way is wrong.
Don't do it that way. You use that app, you're so shit
You don't do it that way. You use that app, you're so shit. Like forget all that stuff. Don't get caught up in meditation, snobbery. Meditation you're basically just training yourself to be less reactive. So we have this space in between feeling angry and being angry. And in that space we get to decide our reaction. So we have a feeling of anger. Before that, it would be manifest as us being angry. We have a space. And meditation helps with this space. It helps us to become that less emotionally reactive. And you know, that helps us choose better responses ultimately. So I would highly encourage meditation. If guided meditation is a really easy way to get into it. Two apps that are very popular, Sam Hurst awaking up up and Headspace are both brilliant apps, but it's ultimately just becoming less emotionally reactive, slowing the brain down. Meditation, one thing to do, creating a momentum event is your second thing to do. The next one, and it's important that you do these in the order. You want to have a change of state and then straight after at your gratitude practice. So the change of state, it could be exercise. So sometimes I'll drop and I'll do 10 press ups. I've played with that one. Doesn't really work for me. So I use my momentum event and my change of state as the same event. It's called therapy because called changes my state. It shocks me from kind of like in a bit of a grumpy mood to when I come out with that shower, I'm singing, I'm humming, I'm the happiest man in the world. And then by taking that change of state and bringing it over to our journal, we can have gratitude. And gratitude is super important because when we journal, I like to list treatings on grateful for, and I actually have a double gratitude practice because before I even journal, I make myself a coffee and I try to be really mindful around how I'm making the coffee. Where did the coffee come from? What was the, you know, supply chain to get me the coffee and think about everything to do with the coffee. You know, isn't it amazing that I have electricity, I can heat this water and I try to be very grateful around that. But then I jump in and my journal and list treatings I'm grateful for. And the idea with this, if you're grateful for something, it's very hard to process a lot of other toxic emotions that the world has thrown at you. Like you can't be angry, hostile, bitter, resentful, and grateful at the same time. It doesn't work. So, but the change of state is super important because if you don't have the change of state before you come across, pen and hands to journal, writing your gratitude, what you're gonna start seeing is you're gonna see problems instead of solutions. So the change of state means you're gonna see solutions instead of problems. It's gonna let you plan out your day, just bringing them up as well to clear your brain and it's grateful to start the day on. But I'd highly encourage you to play around with different, you know, these are the strategy. So just to recap them there, momentum, change of state, gratitude, meditation. And play around with them and craft your own routine. There's no right routine. There's only a right routine for you to help you start the day. And as Rob and Sharma says, to win the morning, win the day. Rob, man, thank you for listening. This has been How to Craft Your Morning Routine and I'm gonna chat to you again tomorrow. Rob, man, before you go, I've got an important announcement to make because over two days and the eighth and ninth of December, I'm gonna speak with 30 of the world's leading fitness experts. And I want you to join me free of charge from the comfort of your own home. This is the first ever Roadman virtual performance summit for aiming to bring together the best minds and fitness and they're gonna share what need our secrets for biohacking your physiology, melting away body fat and smashing your cycling goals. Would you like to learn their secrets? It's easy. All you have to do is register for your free ticket over at www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. That's www.roadmansummit.com forward slash free. The link is in the bio.