Right off the bat, I have to tell you I hate daylight savings time. I really wish one of the idiot government officials that have done nothing would put together a bill that bans daylight savings time. We have daylight in the summer until almost 10 o’clock at night but during the winter you see the sun going down at 4:26 pm. What the f-k? It doesn’t make any sense anymore. Even if you wake up at 6 am… It’s still dark. Sunrise happens at 6:35 am. So why not just push it back a little to 7:35 am and have another hour of daylight after work. Shit, kids are coming home from school and it’s dark out, really…
Again, let me announce my disdain for this stupidity.
The reason I even mention the stupidity of daylight savings time is that it totally f-ks up everyone’s workout schedule. I know it’s the holidays and nobody is actually working out because you decided that between Halloween and new years it’s a good Idea to become a fat piece of shit. Ok, well maybe not, but that’s kinda what happens when it’s fucking dark all the time. You might as well start thinking like that… Because it really does suck to try to get motivated to try and do anything when it’s dark out. The only thing I want to do when sunset hits, is getting some dinner, grab a beer and call it a day… Oh, but that’s right, I still have at least 2 hours left and there’s no beer in sight.
It’s so funny when the sun is out and daylight lasts until 9 pm or so you find yourself not as hungry, wanting to do more stuff, and you find that inner will to get a whole lot more shit done. Come Winter…
There seems to be no time to get anything done, although there is the same number of hours in the day. It’s just plain annoying.
So now that my rant is somewhat over your question is, “How the hell do I get a workout in when I want dinner, a beer and to go to sleep”? Most of the time I would have a funny little quip or a harsh comeback but to tell you the truth, I don’t. I actually like working out and in the Winter, especially with Daylight Savings, I want to say f-k you, I’d rather be fat. I know, not a great inspiration but it’s the truth. When it’s dark, motivation goes right out the window.
I’m pretty lucky. I don’t have a clock to punch every day but I do still have to work and there’s literally only 10 1/2 hours of daylight and I don’t like waking up at 6:30 am so I waste about 3 hours of daylight sleeping until 9 – 9:30 am. So now my daylight is cut to 7 1/2 hours. This homemade natural sleeping aid got me all the sleep I need for the colder days.
So how do I get a workout in?
I wake up, have some coffee, get all my morning chores done and when I feel awake enough I take 10 minutes and do a quick circuit training style workout without equipment. I wrote about something similar a year or so ago. Instead of going to the gym or lifting weights I just perform 5 sets of different bodyweight exercises for three rounds.
The first exercise I do is Jumping Jacks for 1 minute. Jumping Jacks are a great full body, multi-joint exercise that acts as a warm-up and also raises your heart rate. Then I do some pushups for 1 minute. If you have a hard time performing pushups, you can do something called a negative pushup. Where you get to a pushup position and lower yourself down to the floor in 5-6 seconds. I usually do as may regular pushups as I can and then finish off by doing negative pushups. It doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it.
I then do another set of Jumping Jacks for 1 minute and go right into “Air” squats. Place your arms out in front of you and squat as many times as you can in 1 minute. You want to go at a good speed but not too fast that you don’t keep good form. After that do another set of Jumping Jacks for 1 minute. Right after, perform 1 minute of Lunges on each leg. If you don’t know what a Lunge is, go to YouTube and search for it. There are about 1000 videos so I won’t describe how to do it here.
There is no resting in between sets.
It’s one continuous, no break workout. Now get down on your knees and perform Mountain Climbers for 1 minute. Again, YouTube is your friend. The only thing that I will add is to keep your butt down and your back straight and make sure your knees come up to your chest.
Last but not least I do some Criss-Cross Crunches. Basically, you raise your upper body while twisting your trunk at the waist, both hands behind your head touching the opposite elbow to your knee. Then if you feel energetic do another set of Jumping Jacks. It is fairly easy.
I do something similar to this 2-3 times a day when I can steal 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there. When you’re unmotivated it makes more sense to chunk up your workouts. You still get a good 30 minutes in but it’s done throughout your day.
Here’s to getting through this Winter together.