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Alternatives to Caffeine – Early Morning Training

A lot is said about the benefits of working out early in the morning, but not enough is said about the alternatives to caffeine which can actually help you to wake up and get in the mood for a workout session

It is easy to say to yourself  “right, tomorrow is the day. I am going to get up early, get my gym clothes on, go out of that door and have an amazing workout”, but when the alarm tone on your phone buzzes at 5.30 am it is normally a whole different story, more like “arghhh” as you reach for the snooze button numerous times..

 

Early morning training without caffeine is hard…

I myself have made the switch recently to early morning workouts before work and it has been hard, especially as my body doesn’t respond to caffeine, I’m considered weird among my circle of friends because I drink coffee and I really don’t feel any effect, I don’t know why.

Finding alternatives to caffeine to wake up and kick your brain into gear on an early morning can be difficult especially if you don’t respond to caffeine, or maybe for medical reasons you have been advised to stay away form caffeine. I thought I would share some of my findings and reveal the one thing that has really been the most effective of them all.

What I tried before:

Energy drinks

ie. Red Bull – Yeah, these worked for a while, I would put a can next to my bed and as soon as my alarm went off I would gulp it down. I think it worked because with these drinks many of them don’t just contain caffeine, they have a host of other ingredients in them too which give you a hit. But I learnt that energy drinks really aren’t good for my body, after about a week of using this method I noticed I was getting a lot of spots on my face, big ones, so I didn’t continue.

Drinking water

– I remember a time when I really didn’t drink enough water, so I decided to make a change and started drinking 2 litres of water a day, I vividly remember that during the first week upon hearing my alarm I would wake up and I would’nt feel as tired. I didn’t go to bed earlier or change any of my lifestyle patterns. I just felt a lot more awake and ready to start the day. It’s a bit invalid as we should all be drinking sufficient amounts of water anyway, so start now if you don’t. Just fill a 2 litre bottle up and just tell yourself that by the time you go to bed this bottle has to be finished. Simple.

And the winner is…

Avocados,

yep. Bet you never saw that one coming!

They’re probably the best out of all of the alternatives to caffeine I tried. I have one in the morning upon waking up and they give me a lot of energy to workout.

There are a whole host of benefits that avocados can give you, here are a few:

• They contain the good fats – They are high in monounsaturated fats and these are good because your body burns these fats off for energy faster than any other type of fat.
• Avocados contain a host of vitamins and minerals that are really good for giving you energy. Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Vitamin B6 to name a few.
• Avocados boost your mood. they contain serotonin, a feel good neurotransmitter. Very useful when trying to get out and start training early in the morning. After introducing avocados to your diet you will notice a change.

My routine now is to wake up and have an avocado then go out and start training, I can literally train hard for a good hour and a half which is roughly the same as when I took the energy drinks but without the spotty face.

I encourage you to try out our alternatives to caffeine and let us know how you got on.

Danny Loeb