I didn’t just magically become a morning person one day. It took coming back home from a trip overseas and the aftermath we call jet lag for me to finally start waking up earlier. Once I realized that I’m exponentially more productive and energized before the rest of the world wakes up, I knew that rising with the sun was a habit I wanted to hold onto.
Let me preface this by saying I was always a 3 p.m.-workout kinda gal. So when I finally discovered my inner morning person, it became my goal to take better advantage of daylight hours and fit in earlier workouts.
But it’s one thing to just wake up early—getting to the gym before 11 a.m. still seemed like an impossible feat for me. I knew I had to do some planning ahead in order to make this work. That meant guaranteeing a good night’s sleep, placing the workout set I plan to wear by my bed the night before, and investing in some products that would get me excited about hitting the gym before breakfast.
If one of your resolutions is to be initiated into the morning workout club, read on for the products that helped me become one of those people.
Shop these products for morning workout motivation
Not to exaggerate, but I don’t know how I got through workouts before getting my Apple Watch. For starters, it helps track my sleep (as long as I wear it in bed—which is surprisingly comfortable to do, FYI) so I have a better idea of the energy levels I’m working with the next day.
During my workouts, I love that it seamlessly connects with my AirPods and Spotify, so I don’t have to check my phone to put on a playlist and I can just tell Siri to skip a song, hands-free, if I’m not feeling it.
The watch comes with plenty of watch faces to choose from, and I picked one with a timer function on the home screen, which makes it easy to hit the timer and limit my rests so that I’m not staring into space for too long in between sets.
When I decide to finish off my workout with an incline walk on the treadmill or when I jog back home from the gym, my watch shows me which heart rate zone I’m in. That’s super helpful because one of my goals for this year is getting more zone 2 cardio in to improve my endurance and aerobic fitness.
Having all these metrics at my fingertips (literally) gets me motivated to log a strength session and close my rings ear