Why You Should Wake Up At 4:30AM ( & How To Do It! )

Every single morning, I wake up in this bed at 4:30 AM. In this video, we're going to talk about why I do that. We're going to talk about how I do that, and then we're going to talk about why I think you might want to start considering doing that as well. I believe there are many benefits to waking up early, but the first is simply going to be I can get my workouts in. My current routine is I wake up around 4:30, I eat my breakfast, I do some work, and I get to the gym by about 6 AM. The reason I do this is because if I push and delay my workout for later in the day, it might get done, but it also might not. Because let's be honest, much like me, your life is probably going to get pretty crazy during the day, right? You're going to have kids' things going on, you're going to have work things going on, you're just going to be tired and exhausted, and there's just more chances of things to Fuck up your day, for lack of better terms. And so the likelihood of you getting your workout in later in the day might decrease as every hour goes on, and you'd be much more likely just to skip your workout. At least I know I would be. So if I can get my workout done first thing in the morning, I know for a fact it's done, which also saves me a ton of stress and anxiety throughout the day because I'm not sitting here wondering, huh, when am I going to fit my workout in in between this? But I have to do this and you have to do that. If you get it done in the morning, You don't have to worry about anything because it's already done. It's already checked off. And then number 2, it allows me and potentially you to be that much more consistent, which is the most important thing anyway, right? The only thing that matters when it comes to your workouts is are you able to consistently get them done? And so for me, working out earlier in the morning allows me to be more consistent, which then allows me to see more progress as well. And the final note, I don't know if it's this way for you or not, but I just feel like if I can get my workout in early during the day before the rest of the craziness starts, this kind of sets my tone. For the day. Because if I can go in and essentially kick my own ass, if I can push some heavy weights, if I can push myself in my workouts, do Bulgarian split squats, do chest presses, shoulder presses, all these things, when life tries to kick my ass later in the day, I just kind of laugh and brush it off because I'm good. I got through my workout. The rest of the day is pretty damn easy compared to that. The second reason I start my day off early is because I had kind of mentioned this previously, but my routine is I'll wake up, I'll do some work, and I'll get my workout, right? And you might say, well, Eric, you can do that at any time of the day. Why are you doing that? The reason I do it earlier in the morning is because I like to get things done before the rest of the world starts to wake up. I run my own business. And so pretty much at all hours of the day, I am on. I'm sure if like maybe you run your own business or if you're a parent, for example, you can probably relate because your kids don't really have an on and off switch. You're probably always going, right? So if I can wake up early in the morning, it allows me some just clear-headed, to-myself, own personal mental time where I don't have a bunch of things pulling at me, say, as I would at 8, 9, 10, 11 AM during the day. I can get some good work done. I can get my workout done that, for the most part, for the majority of it, is uninterrupted. It just allows me to have that time to myself that I know I probably won't get the rest of the day. This allows me to, to be much more level-headed, clear-focused, which allows me to kind of take on the rest of the things that come in my day that much better. And it helps me manage my stress that much better and also increase my productivity that much better, as I believe it can yours as well. Because when you have this just like you time where nobody else is really up yet, you can focus on things that much more. Which means you can probably be that much more productive and get more things done in less of a timeframe because you don't have these 20 different distractions coming at you. I know for a lot of clients I have coached in the past, especially parents, they have told me like, you know, if they're trying to work out at 4, 5, 6, 7 PM, it's like they get distraction after distraction after distraction. Well, if you wake up a little bit earlier in the morning, you probably cut out a lot of those distractions. The 3rd main reason that I like to wake up early is I believe it buys me back more time. So I kind of touched on this earlier, but if I wake up at 4:30 AM and I personally, I get right to work, and I know not everybody can do that, but just stick with me, we'll touch on that in a second. If I wake up at 4:30, by noon I already have 7.5 hours of work done with an hour workout thrown in there. Again, I believe it makes me that much more productive and I can get way more things done in the day. I remember Kobe Bryant talked about this one time when he was talking about his workout routine, his workout schedule.

So if you get up at 10 in the morning, train at 11, right? 12, say 12, train at 12, train for 2 hours, 12 to 2. You have to let your body recover. So you eat, recover, whatever. You get back out, you train, start training again at 6, train from 6 to 8, right? And now you go home, you shower, you eat dinner, you go to bed, you wake up, you do it again, right? Those are 2 sessions. Right now, imagine you wake up at three, you train at four, go four to six, come home, breakfast, relax. So so la la la. Now you're back at it again, nine to eleven, right? Relax, and now all of a sudden you're back at it again, two to four, and now you're back at it again, you know, seven to nine. Look how much more training I have done by simply starting at four.

And so if you can wake up earlier, maybe you don't even necessarily go to work, but maybe you can use that time for meal prepping. Maybe you can use that time for some extra cardio, getting steps in, maybe on a treadmill. Maybe at the gym, whatever it is. You can use that time for maybe doing some mobility work. You can use that time for even doing things around the house. Something you can use that time to start off your day, which is getting more done. Because usually if you can get more done earlier in the day, you have less to get done later in the day. And I hear all the time like, oh, I gotta come home from work and do this and do that. Well, if maybe you did it before work, you might not have to do as much After work. Now, I also get and understand that it's somewhat of a give and take here, because if you wake up early, you're probably like, Eric, what time are you going to bed? Well, let's kind of dive into some of the things that I do from an actionable standpoint that help me wake up early. And the first one is by far going to be making sure I get to sleep at a decent time. I get, at the very least, I get 6 hours of sleep every single night, no matter what. Doesn't matter. Usually it's more towards that 7 to 8 hours per night mark. And again, I know if maybe you are a parent with young kids, you're like, ha, must be nice, Eric. I understand. And that's where again, maybe you don't have to wake up at exactly 4:30. Maybe yours is 5 or 5:30 or 6 or whatever it is. So you can maybe tweak the time slot. But if I'm waking up at 4:30, I'm getting to bed anywhere between 8:30 to 10:30. And again, it's usually more towards that like 8:30, 8:30 to 9:30 mark. Because if I don't do that, I am not going to be able to consistently wake up at 4:30 AM every single morning. I can, you know, you and I both can probably push through a day or 2 or 3 or maybe even a week, you know, on 5 hours of sleep or whatever it is. But over the long haul, there's no way I would be able to consistently wake up early, but then also be productive. Because it's, again, it's one thing to wake up early and we talked about being more productive, but if you just wake up early and you're just, so tired, so exhausted, so gassed, then you're probably not going to reap all of those benefits. And so it starts the night before, making sure you get to bed at a decent time. And again, I understand this can be hard for some people, but I really encourage you— how much time are you wasting on social media scrolling, scrolling, scrolling? How much time are you wasting watching Netflix? And don't get me wrong, there's a time and place for that kind of stuff, but if you cut out 30 to 60 minutes of that That's 30 to 60 minutes. You can go to sleep earlier and wake up earlier. So automatically, if you're waking up at 8, you can wake up at 7, or if you're waking up at 7, you can wake up at 6, right? So I really challenge you to look at your bedtime routine. What are you doing and what do you really need? Because most people think they need this like mindless scrolling, but I promise you, if you just go to sleep earlier, you're gonna be more energized, and that's what you really need to recharge. You don't need to scroll through cat videos on social media. to recharge. What you need to recharge and feel really good and have more energy is actually just getting more sleep. The cat videos are stopping you from getting more sleep. The last point I'll make on this is I get a lot of times people like, Eric, I'm not tired at 8:30, 9 o'clock. Well, if you woke up earlier, you would be tired when that time came around. You can change your internal clock. It might take about a week or two, but you can change it. And that's the next point. I would just accept for the 2 weeks that you are going to start trying to change your routine, time you wake up, time you go to bed, it's going to be hard. And it's probably going to be hard as shit. You're going to be super tired. You are not going to want to get out of bed. Your eyes are going to be so incredibly heavy. It's going to be challenging. But my thing to you is, if you can just accept that it's going to be challenging and you have the proper expectation, when the time comes for that thing to happen and when it does get hard, You're not like, oh my God, and it's so overwhelming. You're more just like, all right, like, yeah, this blows, but we accept it and now let's just move on from it. And knowing that if you can push through that 2-week timeframe, it will get easier after that. I'm not gonna say it's easy because even to this day, it's not easy for me to wake up at 4:30, but it does get easier after about that 2-week mark. Now, some of the things that actually help me actionably get out of bed are, number one, it's gonna sound silly, but I just rip my covers off and throw the covers off all the way. On the floor, because at that point I would have to get out of my position to get up, get the covers, put them back on, so on and so forth. And it just makes it that much harder for me to get back to bed. It makes it that much easier for me to just like, I'm already out of bed, the covers are on the fucking ground, like I'm already done with it. The second thing is I put my alarm far away where I have to go get up to turn it off. That is a super good hack as well. Number 3, I really just tell myself Just put my two feet on the ground, get up and walk. If after I get up and walk and turn some lights on and you know eat my breakfast, whatever, if I want to go back to bed, cool, I'll go back to bed. I don't think any time though have I ever gotten up, turned the lights on, went and had breakfast, had my protein shake, all these things, took my vitamins, and then went back to bed. After I can get through that like three to five minute period, I'm good. So I just tell myself, let me do that, and if I really want to go back to bed after that, I can. But you'll probably find you don't need to. And the 4th thing is I really just kind of like play some motivational videos on YouTube like you're watching this right now. I can drop some of my favorite ones here below in the description of this video, so feel free to check them out if you want to. But those things kind of help just get me going as well. And I got one last little disclaimer for you right now. I currently don't wake up at 4:30 AM every single day. Some days it's 5, some days it's 5:15, some days like on the weekend if I know I don't have to get up super early to like start work, get my workout in, that kind of stuff, I might go until like 6 AM. So I just want to be fully transparent about that. But what I will say is this: when I first started getting into this routine, it was 4:30 every single day because I really wanted to make sure I had that discipline, I had that routine to make sure I could do it. And so I would encourage you, if you're somebody who maybe you do want to start waking up earlier, I would encourage you to go for a 2-week time period, a 3-week time period, a 4-week time period, something like that. To really have that time every single day, commit to it, build that discipline, and then let's you know say on the weekend maybe you know I wouldn't personally I wouldn't do this thing where like four thirty during the weekdays and like ten o'clock during the weekends. I think that creates a very like unhealthy routine. But maybe you go like four thirty, five a.m., five thirty, whatever the time is, right? You go early and maybe one or two days you go you know an hour or two later because again I don't want you getting to this point where like you're just a fucking zombie walking around every single day and just completely exhausted because. That's not gonna be very good for you either. But that's it. That's why, that's how, and that's why I think you might start doing it as well. Hope you enjoyed the video, and if you did, please feel free to check out this video as well. Hope it helps, and we'll chat soon.