Routines - devil in disguise for true resilience?

5 a.m. - my alarm goes off; I wander to my phone placed 5 feet away from my bed; I stop the alarm; I also stop all emergency alarms I manually set at 15-minute intervals until 6 a.m., as if iPhone technology weren’t advanced enough to take care of the following alarms if the first one was missed.

Next stop: bathroom – on the way, I turn on the coffee machine. I pee. Then - coffee ritual - weighing beans, grinding beans, tamping ground beans, inserting tamped and ground beans into the portafilter of my fake $50 espresso machine – time investment around 7 minutes. It’s 05:09 – I spend about 20 minutes drinking coffee, proper “me time” that helps clear my head. I spare you the details of the 2^nd toilet run; followed by brushing teeth, packing my bag and walking towards my car. Off to the gym at 5:48 +/-2 min depending on how toilet run 2 went. So, I am at the gym at 6:00 am +/-2 min. I put on gym clothes, pee and start – 6:08 am +/-2 min.

Fuck – I forgot my headphones in the car – I curse. I need them, I always use them. I go back to the car to grab them. Running behind schedule; about 3 minutes later than usual – the inner calmness a little less prevalent.

The gym I train at has this huge CrossFit space which I basically own at this time of the day, right next to the commercial gym machines. I fill my bottle of water, say good morning to the 6 a.m. crew (all of us would probably not pass a psychological evaluation for a job – any job; but great guys). My area looks like a mess – apparently the CrossFit class was too busy cleaning up their shit yesterday. Weights, boxes, chalk – it’s all in MY space. Haven’t started a single warm up yet but heart rate elevates. I’m muttering to myself while re-organizing my space. Mess is gone, skipping rope starts. As I release my inner (non-existent boxer) I look up at the clock – 10 minutes behind schedule. Fuck me. I will have to rush. It will be a shitty session. Shitty day. And God will I have to make an effort to keep a straight face with my 9 a.m. client.

It sounds impressive when people hear about my wake-up time and routine. However, I am not keen on telling others because I will sound like an absolute nutjob. Waking up at 5 every day, training fasted from 6-8:30 a.m. … It sounds disciplined, vigorous, resilient. Resilient? Hell yes – that’s the term I want to resonate the most with. We - or at least - I have the picture of a hard-working, disciplined and clear-minded person in mind that keeps showing up and doing his/her work over and over again. And yes, I do - I show up every day. I built a routine. I don’t think – I just do. But what if things don’t go the way I want and need them according to my plan? How easily can minor changes to the mapped-out routine throw people (me) off guard?

One of the first things that most people recommend to newcomers in the fitness world is to build a training routine. Something that is so ingrained in you that you default to it. Lately, I have been asking myself if that is the right way to go about it. Are routines a curse or blessing to real resilience?

Building a morning training routine started in my early 20s. I was working as a trainee in the sales department of a steel manufacturing company. There, I happened to meet one of the first real mentors in adulthood.

My direct supervisor, the head of that department, Michael, made a big impression on me. He was the embodiment of how I imagined a successful salesman – tall, good-looking, charming. He was a former military guy, and his clear and certain tone in combination with the way his shoulder blades were permanently squeezed together, pushing his chest out – a dead giveaway. We had a good connection right from the start, and I was fortunate enough to get hired right after the interview. Honestly, the job was not my cup of tea, nor was the outdated vibe, both hierarchical and architectural, of the company. However, my relationship to Michael was just great. I became sort of his assistant, and I got proficient at reading his thoughts before he even had them. But what Michael also had was his habit from military days to wake up early and go to the gym right after waking up. In retrospect, what I learned over the years is that he did - what I would call these days “softie workout on machines” - for about 30 minutes and then he’d be spending the rest of his 60-minute time investment in the sauna. Nevertheless, what I saw was this disciplined former military guy that woke up at 5 a.m. and trained. For some reason, in adulthood, I developed an admiration for this sort of person (military, real strength – inside out, vigorous but collected, disciplined, resilient). And so, I thought – yeah man it is time for me to take responsibility and also become that person.

I started to wake up at the same time Michael did, 5 a.m., and trained at 7 a.m. Yes, it took me around 2 hours from waking up to the gym and no, it wasn’t a graceful morning routine that included gratitude journaling, ice baths and sunlight exposure (fuck no – I was living in Germany at that time). It was simply me trying to fight my circulatory weakness and emerging puke reflex. After about an hour I was ready to nurture and prepare myself for the upcoming session which meant shoving in four eggs, salmon, bread and coffee. With a bloated stomach I was ready to attack the day’s training.

Considering this, don’t ask me how but I’ve been sticking to this routine for about 10 years now, including the accomplishment of only needing 20 minutes of coffee “me time” these days instead of the one and a half hours of fighting my inner demons and stomach.

Without establishing this routine for years, I doubt that I would’ve stuck to training on that regular basis. But up to what point do routines blind us to the original intention of building healthy habits? The more often we show up, the more prone we are to becoming rigid in our behavior. And tiny things (cleaning up 2 pieces of gym equipment) already have the power to throw us off. When you focus hard on an image for some time, your vision gets blurry, and you do not really sense the details in it. In my opinion, the real value lies within paying attention to our patterns. You can - and in my opinion, you even should - have routines that you can default into. It gives us stability. But what gives us resilience is the ability to keep going even under changed and maybe worse circumstances without it affecting our overarching path. The Latin origin resilire literally means to bounce back. We bounce back from days where training didn’t go as planned, when sleep wasn’t great, when sickness kept us from training, when life happened in holidays, or when you forgot your headphones. What matters is that you bounce back with the attitude of: I’ll give the best I have to offer on that day under the present circumstances. Sometimes it’s a full-blown 100 %, and sometimes it’s only 60 %. And you are aware of that but still push the percentage you have available and don’t whine about what went wrong that led to why you are not having the perfect training today.

To finish on some practical advice: build routines that lead you on the path you want to step onto; know that they won’t feel easy at first; when you fall off your routine use real resilience to get back to it. Train consistently with a present mind that is not distracted by the inner battle of contemplating about what could have been more ideal today.