I’m changing things up a little. It’s important to take plenty of time and give new routines a chance, but you should still always be optimizing. My initial intention was to incorporate a 10-minute mobility practice in the evenings as Kelly Starret advocates. This makes perfect sense, but I never remember to implement it.

I also like the idea of doing a 30-minute walk or lifting in the morning before everything else. Some days, this works just fine, but not always. Right now, I often need to get to work early. I think putting this shorter mobility practice in that time slot will make more sense.

So my new morning routine consists of:

• 10 minutes of meditation. Outside in the sunlight.
• 5-minute Journaling / Priming
• 10-minute Mobility.

It’s only been a few days, but so far, so good. If I get into a time crunch one morning, I can cut the whole thing down to 10 minutes. This will still get something done without breaking the streak. Building and maintaining habits is the primary goal.

I’ve tried to do the 10-minute mobility routine in the morning Max Shank style before. In the morning, my spine takes quite a while to rehydrate and loosen up. Often times In the past, I woke up too stiff and sore to move very much for at least an hour. But so far this week everything is going fine. Maybe it has to do with the other two things leading up to it. Or maybe something else has changed. I don’t know. But if it keeps working out, I’ll keep doing it. These three things done in this order seem to just flow.

I prefer to do my lifting in the evening, anyway. This is when I feel the strongest and most ready for battle. The only issue is if I do a lot of physical work that day, I get tired and it’s too easy to skip my training. I’m just going to have to be more disciplined and get it done regardless of how I feel. I was also using the excuse of not wanting to train too late and have it affect my sleep. Last week I did it anyway a couple of times within an hour and a half of bedtime without issues. So, I think that excuse is mostly debunked. The sprint workout I did today kept my heart rate high for several hours, so that may not be ideal, but I think lifting close to bedtime is fine.

So these are the changes I’m making for now. As I said, this is always a work in progress. I will reevaluate again in a week or two, but for now, this seems to be a smooth flow.

Be sure to follow me for updates. Next time, I’ll get a little deeper into the mobility practice itself.