My sons and I have been optimizing to do three things.

1. Spend more time together.
2. Consistently get our weight training sessions in.
3. Get better sleep.

We have created a process to dominate all three in an hour.

Three days a week, my young men and I leave the house for the gym at 5:45 am. School starts for them at 8:00am. We could opt to go in the afternoon, but by the time the day is done, our schedules are so different that we wouldn’t be able to train together. Additionally, our physical and emotional bandwidth might conceivably be sapped. For camaraderie, the crack of dawn lift makes sense. For better sleep, it does too. From huffingtonpost.com:

Exercise at any time of the day will help you sleep better than no exercise at all, found the National Sleep Foundation, but there are a few reasons why working up a sweat in the morning might make for an even more restful night. First, sleep experts say that exposure to daylight soon after waking (during a run, bike ride or even a drive to the gym) has the effect of putting a time stamp on your brain: It reminds it when you woke up and when you need to power down at night. Health researchers at Appalachian State University have also found that morning exercise reduces blood pressure and causes an additional 25 percent dip at night, which has been correlated with better sleep.

We knew that choosing to lift weights together would be beneficial in a variety of different ways. What we didn’t know is that bonding over exercise has a very unique upside. From weighttraining.com:

When a person exercises, chemical changes occur in his or her brain. Levels of dopamine and serotonin increase which make you feel calm and happy.

When you are in this emotional state you are able to focus on tasks better and pay attention for longer periods of time.

Being able to think more clearly and focus gives the morale a boost, which encourages you to continue with the activity.

I’m certainly pleased with continuing the activity. I’m more thrilled, however, with the idea that I will be near my moppets with my (and their) senses elevated. There are few things more powerful than sharing time with loved ones while in as state of contentment. We are naturally buzzed together.

To recap, by training as a crew in the morning, we clearly check the aforementioned three boxes.

To family,

Kap