Where did October go? While you are cleaning up after your Halloween parties (bah humbug) planning your Thanksgiving dinners and starting your Christmas shopping (gasp), I will be thinking about another upcoming event.

Daylight Saving Time ends in the US on November 3. While most people are collectively rejoicing for the extra hour of sleep, I am looking forward to the opportunity to begin a new habit (or I should say, return to an old habit) — the practice of early morning workouts.

Just as the trees shed their leaves, autumn feels like the perfect opportunity to shed our bad habits, our negative thinking, and succumb to the early morning pull of the pavement (or the pull-up bar).

Instead of sleeping that extra hour on Monday morning, how about using this extra hour to build a new healthy habit? Your internal clock doesn't know about the end of Daylight Saving.

When my alarm goes off at 5:30 am on Monday, my body will still think it is my regularly scheduled wake-up time of 6:30 am. Even though they can force most of us living in the US to "spring" our clocks forward and "fall" backward every year, our bodies are working on their internal clock. If we continue to get up at our usual internal clock time, our bodies won't even realize we are getting up early to workout. We will eventually get used to the new time, as always, but this year I am planning to use the time change to my advantage; An end of Daylight Saving hack, if you will.

You see, even though I have written many blog posts about working out in the morning, it just has been one of those healthy habits that fell to the wayside. When I was doing it regularly, I loved every second of it.

Maybe not every second during it, but I loved the time to myself in the morning. I loved the "me time" before work. I loved the chance to unwind before I got wound up. I especially loved the feeling of having my workout done before I did anything else in my day. I had this euphoric feeling (aka runner's high) before I ever even got in the shower, and it was a fantastic way to start each day. Tough some days? Yes. Worth it? Absolutely.

I once told my sister that I couldn't drag myself out of bed in the morning anymore and now her words ring in my head, slightly louder than my alarm clock on most days, "It's not that you can't. It is that you won't." She's pretty smart. Right? And pretty too. 

Routine is a beautiful thing, and I am going to use the end of Daylight Saving to kickstart this healthy habit.

The end of Daylight Saving is the perfect time to fall back into a morning workout routine and to spring into my running shoes or the #shredshed. Who's with me? Seriously, I need you to text me at 5:30 am and remind me of this post.

Do you like morning workouts? Is it a struggle (like it is for me), or do you bounce out of bed ready to take on the gym? Or do you prefer evening workouts? There is no best time to exercise. Whatever time you will work out consistently is the best time. What do you think? 

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Coach Lea