Introduction: 

• I’m always looking at ways to enhance my routine, improve my good habits and eliminate the bad. One I’d been struggling to keep over the last year or so was going to the gym 3 times a week, I was very good at going at the weekend but with a busy job and wanting to see friends I struggled to go during the week.
• In this piece I want to explain how I managed to hack my morning routine and add in my third gym session, a new good habit. It’s been successful, I have finally managed to get into the habit of doing at least 1 gym session before work each week.
• In the rest of this I will explain through this example how you can add a new good habit into your own life. Specifically I will (a) Define the blockers which prevented me from forming the habit previously,  (b) Show how defining these allowed me to break them down one by one, and how I removed them (c) Reiterate the key ‘enforcers’ you should follow in the early days of creating a new habit to ensure it sticks. The fundamental takeaway is this: to be able to create a new habit you need to first define your blockers and then one-by-one break them down and remove them, if you don’t define them you can’t remove them, and you’ll imagine a new blocker each time.
• I enjoy writing on habits and habit formation, so if you are interested by this article do take a look at some of these: ‘Breaking Bad Habits and Routines’, ‘Morning Routine’ and ‘Forming Habits and Routines’

Initial Blockers

• Back in my ‘Morning Routine’ article I shared in June 2016 I sighted 3 key reasons why I was failing:
  • Protein intake – I’m naturally a slim person, I have a swimmers physique which I definitely don’t complain about, however there is one draw-back: if I’m not taking enough protein to fuel myself before and after gym sessions then I burn muscle, and that isn’t something I can afford to do. Therefore, I must take on-board protein 30 mins before I work out. This means I not only have to wake up early enough to get to the gym before getting to work at 8:30 I have to add an extra 30 mins to give me time to digest the protein. I definitely do not enjoy voluntarily waking up pre-6am!
  • Effectiveness of session – I can sometimes struggle getting to the gym, but once there I always want to have a big session and justify the effort of going. I am concerned that early in the morning I will not have the drive, motivation or energy to get over my tiredness and maximise my session.
  • Breaking my current routine – I am a massive creature of habit, my current morning routine works and I’m concerned adding a morning gym session in once or twice a week could throw off the things I’m currently getting right. I fully recognize the fallacy of my argument, wanting both things, unfortunately that’s human nature.
• Defining these blockers is the most important starting point when you want to add a new habit. Without identifying the beast that is preventing you from doing something, you’ll never be able to over-come it. This is very similar to a key concept within Stoic philosophy. Stoic’s believe in the importance of ‘Negative Visualisation’. By visualising the thing you most fear, or in this case, your biggest blockers from forming a new habit, you can see that the negative/blocker is not as bad as you feared.

Overcoming the Blockers

• Once I had the blockers defined and understood I could take each of them in turn:
  • Protein intake – Getting up before 6am to take protein was too much for me, so I needed to find an alternative to get around this. Through research I found a supplement based workaround. Instead of getting up early I could take Micellar Casein Protein before bed and use Informed BCAA in the Gym, both from Bulk Powders. Micellar Casein Protein is a milk protein which is very high in protein but low in lactose, with a significant amino acid profile. The key element about it for me is its ability to form in the stomach. This means it is difficult and time consuming for the body to breakdown, which results in it being slow releasing protein which  I won’t have burnt up before I hit the gym 8 hours later. Informed BCAA is a Branch Chain Amino Acid supplement which I take during the early morning gym sessions. Amino acids are the core components that make up all proteins, therefore taking this supplement during exercise helps my body better absorb the casein from the night before, as well as supporting muscle growth and preventing muscle burn out.
  • Effectiveness of session – This was a lot more mental than physical. The slow releasing protein and BCAA definitely helped ensure I had more energy but the key thing for overcoming this was simply going. By forcing myself to get to the gym the first few times, I realised that once I got there my body seemed to kick in, remembering ‘I’m at the gym and when I’m in the gym I work hard’ and forgetting about the time. The final key thing that helped with this blocker was not having a watch or looking at the clock, this prevented me psyching myself out by seeing the time.
  • Breaking my current routine – I managed to overcome this by using the Stoic ‘Negative Visualisation’ technique. I found 10 minutes and sat down to properly think this blocker through. During this time I visualised what the ‘worst case’ would be and realised that because my current routine is so well defined and understood that even if introducing early morning gym sessions ruined it completely, I would  soon see this, stop the early gym sessions and re-introduce the old routine. In the worst case it would take my body 3 –4 weeks to reacclimatise back to the old routine, in the grand scheme of things this seemed to be a very mild worst case scenario and definitely worth the risk.
• Whilst taking on each of these blockers individually I found there was another one I wasn’t ready to admit to myself originally, namely that I love sleeping and didn’t want to sacrifice an hour and a half of sleep for the gym. Realising this only re-enforced the key lesson I’ve learnt, defining and then going through the blockers 1-by-1 allowed me to realise and understand there was something else and then tackle it, no excuses.
  • Loving sleep – Working from home fixed this right away, it allowed me to have a good gym session, get up at the same time I would if I had to commute to the office and start work only 15mins later. I know not everyone will be able to do this but you’ll be surprised how many companies are open to it, especially given the high cost of desk space in the office and the improvements in collaboration and communication tools which make it easier and easier to work remotely, e.g. video conferencing, instant messaging, Yammer etc.
• Overall defining the blockers is the biggest struggle. Once they are defined you simply need to take each of them in turn and remove them, either through physical or mental effort. Doing this will also mean you eventually have to admit to the blockers you didn’t even realise existed.

Re-enforcing it

• Once you’ve defined and removed your blockers, the final hurdle is to get the new habit re-enforced. For that you must understand the 5 key steps outlined below:
  • Translate goal into a behaviour
  • Establish a clear context
  • Develop a reliable cue
  • Create a powerful reinforcement
  • Repeat until it feels normal
• I won’t go into each of these in detail in this post as I’ve already covered them in great detail in a previous post called ‘Forming Habits and Routines’ which you can find here.
• I will just highlight that whilst it’s unlikely you’ll be able to use all of these to help re-enforce your new habit, do look to use more than one, some complement each other excellently and can really help keep you on track.

Conclusion

• The aim of this blog has not been to gloat about how I’ve managed to add another good habit into my routine which has been on my ‘want’ list for a long time, although that is a nice side effect!
• The aim has been to show you how you add something positive to your life, even if you’ve failed before to do so. The key thing I’ve learnt from doing this myself, and sharing it with you, is that to be able to create a new habit, you must first define your blockers and then one-by-one break them down. If you don’t define them and then tackle one-by-one then you’ll never start the process of adding a new habit, as the general reasoning of ‘it’s too difficult’ will stop you from even trying. Good luck!

 

Photo Credit.