Do This Every Morning, Wake Up Bigger (Morning Routine)

Summary

Jeremy Ethier introduces tips to enhance your morning routine to boost muscle growth and productivity. He stresses the importance of setting a consistent wake-up time to align with your circadian rhythm, which aids in regulating sleep hormones. Sunlight exposure in the morning is crucial for melatonin production at night, improving sleep quality and muscle recovery. Jeremy shares his personal routine involving early morning wake-ups, weighing himself to track muscle gain, consuming caffeine strategically, and fitting in a morning workout. Additionally, he underscores the significance of a protein-packed breakfast to prevent muscle breakdown. Cold exposure and its mixed effects on muscle recovery and metabolism are briefly discussed. Ethier concludes by encouraging viewers to adapt these strategies for personal benefit and highlights his "Built With Science Plus" app as a resource for personalized fitness guidance.

Highlights

• Jeremy's morning routine tweaks significantly improved his muscle gains. 🏆
• Aligning sleep schedules with natural circadian rhythms boosts recovery and growth. 💤
• Morning sunlight exposure is crucial for nighttime melatonin production. 🌞
• Strategically consuming caffeine can enhance workout performance and focus. ☕
• A balanced, high-protein breakfast supports muscle building. 🍽️

Key Takeaways

• Morning sunlight kickstarts melatonin production for better sleep and recovery. 🌅
• Consistent wake-up times align with your body's natural rhythm, enhancing sleep and muscle growth. 🕒
• Morning workouts help in advancing your body's internal clock and improve sleep quality. 🏋️
• A protein-rich breakfast is vital to prevent muscle catabolism after long sleep periods. 🍳
• Cold exposure has mixed benefits but can boost alertness. ❄️

Overview

Jeremy Ethier shares the secrets behind his transformed morning routine that skyrockets muscle growth, energy, and productivity. By setting a wake-up time that aligns with his circadian rhythm, he optimizes hormone regulation, ensuring better sleep and recovery. He highlights the importance of morning sunlight for boosting melatonin production at night.

His routine involves weighing himself every morning to track gains accurately, strategically consuming caffeine to enhance focus and workouts, and ensuring a morning workout to advance his circadian rhythm. Ethier also emphasizes the need for a high-protein breakfast to prevent muscle breakdown after waking up.

While cold exposure post-workout has mixed reviews in terms of recovery, it undoubtedly spikes adrenaline and awareness. Ethier encourages viewers to experiment with his tips to suit their lifestyle and introduces his 'Built With Science Plus' app for tailored fitness planning.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Personal Anecdote In the chapter titled 'Introduction and Personal Anecdote,' the author shares a personal story about how their unproductive morning routine negatively impacted their energy levels, workouts, and muscle growth. They describe how a chaotic start, which included waking up late, phone scrolling, and hastily grabbing breakfast, led to feeling drained and unproductive. The chapter transitions into how making six specific changes to their morning routine dramatically improved their physical fitness, energy, and productivity. The author implies that by adjusting simple morning habits, others can experience similar benefits, beginning with setting an effective wakeup time. This sets the stage for further discussions on optimizing daily routines for improved muscle growth and recovery.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Importance of Sleep for Muscle Growth The chapter emphasizes the importance of sleep in muscle growth. It highlights that during sleep, the body enters an anabolic state crucial for repairing and building muscle. Poor sleep can negatively affect muscle recovery, and consistent lack of quality sleep can slow down muscle growth and fat loss. The chapter suggests that improving sleep quality can enhance muscle growth outcomes, independent of exercise and diet changes. It also touches on the significance of circadian rhythms in this process.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Circadian Rhythm and Melatonin This chapter discusses the Circadian rhythm, a 24-hour cycle that aligns with daylight, affecting hormone regulation such as melatonin and cortisol. Melatonin, in particular, is highlighted as the body's natural sleep hormone. As darkness falls, melatonin production increases, signaling the body to prepare for sleep, underscoring the importance of consistent melatonin production for restorative sleep.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Benefits of Morning Sunlight The chapter highlights the importance of morning sunlight for enhancing melatonin production. It connects consistent deep sleep cycles with muscle recovery, suggesting that exposure to morning sunlight is a natural way to boost melatonin levels. While reducing screen time and dimming lights at night are common tips for improving sleep, the chapter emphasizes that melatonin production actually starts in the morning with sunlight exposure.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Adjusting Sleep Schedule for Optimal Recovery High-performance individuals like athletes Ronaldo and LeBron James, and billionaire Richard Branson, have optimized their sleep schedules by waking up at sunrise. Exposing eyes to daylight early in the morning sends signals to the brain to regulate melatonin production, beneficial for deep sleep. Such schedules appear advantageous, even for self-proclaimed night owls.
• 04:00 - 05:30: Morning Weigh-In as a Tracking Tool The chapter discusses the importance of aligning sleep schedules with the body's natural rhythms. It emphasizes that the human body is not suited for late nights and is adapted for daylight. The author shares a personal anecdote about initially struggling to wake up early due to hustle culture's influence, which advocates for grinding harder and sleeping less. Instead, the author suggests getting adequate sleep. Research indicates that most people need at least 7 hours of quality sleep, with some athletes requiring 8 to 10 hours.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Caffeine Timing and Consumption The chapter discusses optimizing caffeine consumption and timing to improve sleep and morning routines. The narrator finds their ideal sleep schedule by experimenting and concludes they need 8 hours of sleep to feel rested when waking at 6:00 a.m. They achieve this by reducing late-night activities and setting an early bedtime. To aid their morning routine, they place their alarm across the room to avoid snoozing, and they make it a point to get morning light exposure to kickstart their day.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Measuring Sleep Quality and Morning Workouts This chapter discusses methods for measuring sleep quality and incorporating morning workouts into your routine. It starts by addressing the importance of exposure to morning light for regulating your body's internal clock. Even if natural sunlight isn't available in the early morning, a light that provides at least 10,000 lux can be used as an alternative, and a recommendation for such a device is provided in the chapter. Following this, the chapter touches on the practice of morning weigh-ins. It emphasizes the value of weighing oneself at the same time every day as a means to effectively track muscle-building progress, underlining that timing and consistency are crucial in obtaining accurate results.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Impact of Morning Exercise on Sleep The chapter discusses the importance of morning as a consistent time to measure body weight due to minimal fluctuations. It explains how this method provides a more reliable baseline for tracking weight changes, which is particularly useful for those looking to build muscle. The chapter notes that body weight can vary by as much as 5 to 7 pounds throughout the day due to factors like food intake, water consumption, and sodium levels, hence emphasizing morning as the ideal time for accurate measurement.
• 10:30 - 12:00: Significance of Breakfast in Muscle Building This chapter discusses the importance of a stable weight for muscle building and fat loss. It highlights how a consistent morning routine, like weighing oneself after using the bathroom and before brushing teeth, can help in maintaining this stability. The chapter introduces 'habit stacking' as a method to create new habits by integrating them into existing automatic routines. The concept of evaluating one's diet by monitoring weekly weight changes is also discussed, emphasizing that to build muscles while losing fat, one's weight should remain fairly consistent.
• 12:00 - 13:00: Protein Consumption Myths Debunked The chapter titled 'Protein Consumption Myths Debunked' discusses the importance of establishing small, automatic habits to build momentum in daily routines. An example provided is how pairing teeth brushing with logging information into the Built With Science Plus app has streamlined the author's morning routine, making it more automatic. Furthermore, the chapter hints at the strategic use of caffeine as a tool to enhance focus, mood, and workout effectiveness, noting the significance of timing its consumption. Detailed guidance on caffeine timing and its benefits on workouts is promised for later parts of the discussion.
• 13:00 - 14:00: Pre- and Post-Workout Nutrition The chapter explores the timing of cortisol levels in relation to caffeine intake. It is mentioned that cortisol levels peak 30 to 45 minutes after waking, and adding caffeine during this period might lead to overstimulation, potentially causing a mid-afternoon energy crash. However, the chapter challenges this notion with research evidence, suggesting that the idea lacks support. Personal experiences are also shared, indicating that some individuals, including the author, prefer consuming caffeine early for its benefits, highlighting that caffeine's halflife is a factor affecting its impact.
• 14:00 - 15:00: Cold Showers: Benefits and Misconceptions The chapter titled 'Cold Showers: Benefits and Misconceptions' discusses the duration caffeine stays active within the body, illustrating how the effects of caffeine persist long after consumption. For instance, consuming 200 mg of caffeine at 2 p.m. will still leave 50 mg in your system by midnight, which can affect sleep quality. The author shares a personal routine, preferring to have a cup of Earl Grey tea, containing about 50 mg of caffeine, shortly after waking at 6 a.m., which provides just enough stimulation to start the day productively.
• 15:00 - 17:30: Conclusion: Morning Routine and Personalization The chapter discusses the importance of creating a morning routine to optimize personal productivity. It highlights a technique called 'deep work' and the use of a specially formulated pre-workout supplement that includes caffeine and an ingredient called 'Eline' to enhance alertness without a subsequent energy crash. The narrative advises against consuming caffeine post-noon to avoid sleep disruptions.

Do This Every Morning, Wake Up Bigger (Morning Routine) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 what if a few simple tweaks to your morning routine could instantly boost your muscle growth my mornings used to be a mess I'd wake up late scroll my phone then rush out the door with whatever breakfast I could grab my energy sucked my workouts felt weak and my muscles just didn't seem to recover but after making six size back changes to my morning my gains drastically improved along with my energy and productivity and the same can happen for you starting with your wakeup time so when you work out your muscle sustains
• 00:30 - 01:00 small amounts of damage but at night is when your body flips a switch entering its most anabolic state to repair and grow new muscle that's why even a single night of poor sleep has been shown to negatively affect muscle recovery and why multiple long-term Studies have found that consistently poor sleep dramatically slows down muscle growth and fat loss so even without training harder or eating more protein just improving your sleep can get you better results and the key to this has to do with your circadian rhythm your body
• 01:00 - 01:30 runs on a 24-hour schedule called the Circadian rhythm when you stay in sink with daylight going to bed earlier and waking up closer to Sunrise you help your brain regulate hormones like melatonin for sleep and cortisol for waking up now melatonin is your body's natural sleep hormone when the sun sets and your environment gets dark melatonin production accelerates signaling your body to wind down and prepare itself for deep restorative sleep the more consistently you prod produce melatonin
• 01:30 - 02:00 at the same time each night the more effectively you'll cycle into the deep sleep stages that give your muscles the highest rates of recovery so how do we boost melatonin maybe we just pop in a supplement actually the best way to ramp up melatonin is by getting morning sunlight you probably heard the advice about dimming the lights in your home and reducing scream time at night which is important but here's something really cool your nightly melatonin production actually begins in the morning it's why
• 02:00 - 02:30 High performers like Ronaldo and LeBron James wake up religiously at Sunrise even billionaire Richard Branson sleeps with his blinds open to let natural light wake him up when you expose your eyes to Daylight early in the morning it sends a powerful signal to your brain's internal clock to ramp up your melatonin around bedtime and to continue increasing it throughout the night exactly what you need for deep restorative sleep once you get this right it feels like a cheat cat even self-proclaimed night owls have been sh
• 02:30 - 03:00 to benefit from aligning their sleep schedules with their body's natural Rhythm our body simply wasn't built for late nights it was built for daylight but waking up this early isn't easy trust me I failed horribly at first hustle culture told me to grind harder and sleep less well I say just sleep a little faster so initially I thought I could just wake up at 6:00 a.m. without changing my bedtime bad idea research consistently shows that for most people 7 plus hours of quality sleep is crucial some athletes swear by 8 nine or even 10
• 03:00 - 03:30 hours but after some trial and error I found that my sweet spot is 8 hours and this meant if I wanted to wake up with the son at 6:00 a.m. I needed to cut out my Netflix binges and wind down in bed by 9:30 p.m. latest I also set my phone across a room so when my alarm goes off I have to physically get up to turn it off instead of snoozing it while I'm in bed then I head outside or by the window to soak up some Morning Light even if it's cloudy out the Rays will still Peak
• 03:30 - 04:00 through to your eyes but if your sun doesn't rise till later you can still replicate this effect by investing in a light that provides at least 10,000 luck of brightness and filters out as much UV light as possible and I'll leave a link to one I recommend in the description box down below but once that's done the next thing I do is weigh myself if you know how to actually use it a daily morning weighin is one of the best ways to track your muscle building progress but timing and consistency are key when you wait yourself at the same time every
• 04:00 - 04:30 morning right after waking up and after using the bathroom you eliminate most of the random fluctuations of body weight for example my weight easily fluctuates by 5 to 7 lbs throughout the day depending on what I've eaten how much water I've had or even just how much sodium was in my last meal but in the morning that is my true Baseline and tracking this gives you immediate feedback if you're trying to build muscle you should see your morning weight slowly creep up by about half a pound per week if it's not you're
• 04:30 - 05:00 probably not eating enough whereas if your goal is to lose fat while building muscle then your weight should stay relatively stable or just drop very slightly every week and if it's not you're probably eating too much but the best part about a weigh yourself in the morning is that it's easy to stay consistent there's this concept called habit stacking pairing a new habit with something you already do automatically so in the morning I wake up I use the bathroom and then I brush my teeth all I
• 05:00 - 05:30 had to do was pair brushing my teeth with weighing in and logging into my built with science Plus app and boom it's now become automatic takes 5 seconds but that small habit compounds over time and gives me the momentum to carry out the next part of my morning routine which in my case is caffeine so caffeine is one of the best tools you can use to boost Focus mood and even your workouts which I'll talk about later but timing it right is key some experts suggest the leaning caffeine for
• 05:30 - 06:00 90 to 120 minutes after waking the idea here is that your cortisol levels naturally Peak about 30 to 45 minutes after waking up so adding caffeine on top of that could over stimulate your body and lead to a midafternoon crash which for many people just leave to another shot of caffeine but here's the thing research doesn't actually support this and in my experience I haven't personally noticed a difference I actually prefer to have my caffeine as early as possible that's because for for most people caffeine has a halflife of
• 06:00 - 06:30 about 6 hours so if you have an energy drink with 200 mg of caffeine at 2 p.m. by 8:00 p.m. your body still has 100 migr circulating in a system and by midnight you'd still have around 50 Mig that's basically like drinking a cup of green tea while you're trying to fall asleep so for me personally shortly after waking at 6:00 a.m. I'll have an Earl gry tea which has about 50 Mig of caffeine just enough to help me bang out
• 06:30 - 07:00 a couple hours of deep work and then by 9:00 a.m. I'll have a scoop of our built with science pre-workout which contains 180 Mig of caffeine but also an added ingredient called Eline which helps smooth out the energy boost and prevents a hard crash you usually get from taking that amount of caffeine on its own after that I cuddle caffeine completely for me personally any caffeine after 12:00 p.m even if it's just a green tea or D Coke makes it far more difficult for me to get the quality sleep on
• 07:00 - 07:30 but while we spent a lot of time talking about Sleep Quality and what affects it we haven't yet talked about how exactly to measure it well one way to measure Sleep Quality is to do what scientists did and track your nocturnal erections yes this is a real study scientists actually strapped devices onto people while they slept to monitor their biological enthusiasm and according to the data the guys who got better sleep had better results down there while the ones with poor sleep let's just say
• 07:30 - 08:00 things just weren't looking so great even biohacking YouTuber Brian Johnson he claims that a healthy male should have 3 to five erections per night lasting a total of 2 and2 hours I had four total erections for a duration of just over 3 hours to put this in context my nighttime erections are the length of the Titanic the movie not the boat and that is better than an average 18-year-old now unless you're planning to mon that somehow more realistic way
• 08:00 - 08:30 to track your sleep quality is with a smart ring or band that gives you a sleep score but honestly you'll just know based on how you feel as you're waking up and especially during a morning workout which is arguably the best time to get it done so before YouTube I used to work a standard 95 job and every day I told myself I'd work out right after work but half of the time I'd rather be too exhausted from the day and just make an excuse to skip it or something unexpected would come up by training in the morning you essentially guarantee happens before life can throw
• 08:30 - 09:00 you any your curveballs plus you'll ride that post-workout high for hours which can make your day more productive and your mood more stable but the true benefits of a morning workout actually happen at night so a lot of people who struggle with getting good sleep they experience a phase delay in their circadian rhythm this is when your 24-hour internal clock is shifted a bit later making it harder to go to bed early and harder to wake up around Sunrise but recent researches found morning exercise leads to what's known
• 09:00 - 09:30 as a circadian phase Advance meeing your Eternal clock actually shifts earlier and drastically improves Sleep Quality and it didn't matter if participants were early birds or night owls this effect was seen across the board now if you're used to training later on the day you might initially notice that your list feel heavier and your performance takes a hit when you first switch to morning workouts that's completely normal your body temperature and neuromuscular activation are actually a bit lower in the morning which can make
• 09:30 - 10:00 you feel sluggish but the good news is this is just temporary while pre-workout caffeine can actually help minimize the initial drop in performance your body will quickly adapt and in a few weeks you'll likely be lifting just as much if not more than what you were in the afternoon especially once your sleeve schedule is dialed in that said if you're somebody who just genuinely prefers working out later in the day that's perfectly fine any kind of morning exercise can be beneficial even even if it's just a short while and the
• 10:00 - 10:30 benefit of a morning run is it's a guaranteed way to make sure your day just can't get any worse but either before or after morning exercise you want to fuel your body with a proper muscle building breakfast your muscles are in a constant tug-of war between breaking down and building up ideally we want to tip the scales in favor of musle growth but here's the issue when you go a long time without eum protein muscle breakdown actually starts to outpace muscle repair so while getting 7 to 8
• 10:30 - 11:00 hours of quality sleep is great once you wake up it means you've gone a long time without protein potentially putting your body into every Jim bro's worst nightmare a catabolic State I actually had a friend in high school who was so paranoid about this that he'd set an alarm at 3:00 a.m. every single night just to chug approach and Shake was it Overkill probably but was he jacked also say yes and it turns out there's research that in some ways supports this scientists tested two groups of lters
• 11:00 - 11:30 both ate the same amount of total daily protein but one group spread their protein evenly across breakfast lunch and dinner the other group ate most of their protein at dinner with very little at breakfast while both groups got stronger the high protein breakfast group actually saw slightly bigger gains in strength and lean muscle mass so skipping or even skimping on your breakfast could mean leaving muscle gains on the table but you often see celebrities like the Rock and Mark Walberg devouring massive protein Rich
• 11:30 - 12:00 breakfast I had five eggs I had a pork chop wild smoked salmon some Greek yogurt you start adding it up and you realize this dude is pushing over 100 gram of protein before most people even wake up but doesn't this just go to waste for years Jim Bros believed anything over 30 g of protein in one meal just can't be used by the body luckily scientists recently put this to the test they compared 25 G versus 100 g of protein in a single meal surprisingly
• 12:00 - 12:30 muscle protein synthesis kept increasing so even at 100 G in a single meal your body can still use the extra protein to build muscle but the study also shows that eating four times as much protein in a single meal providing just a 30% boost in protein synthesis so my recommendation is to aim for at least 20 to 30 G of high quality protein in your morning meal then spread the rest of your daily intake across a few meal throughout the day but what if you're
• 12:30 - 13:00 somebody who prefers working out facet and doesn't like eating anything before the workout while that is fine you have to pay attention to your hunger levels research has shown that if you're hungry going into a workout your performance suffers so if that's you consider a small snack and if not then just make sure that you have a high protein meal within an hour after your workout but here's what I personally do so if I'm training first thing in the morning I'll have a banana with one scoop of my built with science whe protein powder including what's in the protein powder
• 13:00 - 13:30 there's only five ingredients in my entire breakfast and 29 G of fast digesting Protein that's it it allows my stomach to quickly digest the food and give me an immediate boost of energy after my workout is when I have my more satiating slow digestive meal and this is usually either oatmeal topped with half a scoop of vs protein powder and Greek yogurt or a sourdough bread sandwich with four whole eggs but you may have noticed that nowhere in my routine did I talk talk about the water temperature of my showers cold exposure
• 13:30 - 14:00 whether it's a cold shower or ice bath is believed to be a GameChanger for Muscle Recovery metabolism and looking really really cool on Instagram the bad news is that while cold exposure immediately after workout actually does seem to help you recover quicker it does so by blunting the full recovery process leading to less muscle growth and strength it also hasn't been shown to do anything notable for fat loss so why do so many people love it one reason is it
• 14:00 - 14:30 definitely flips your nervous system into high gear heart rate spikes adrenaline and dopamine shoot up and you feel wide awake for these reasons I must admit I am an occasional partaker in cold showers to naturally wake me up but by cold showers I mean I take a really hot shower to warm me up and then I crank it cold for a few seconds and scream like a baby that's enough that's enough so here's my entire morning routine laid out for you there's no need to be a biohacking super villain waking
• 14:30 - 15:00 up at 4:00 a.m. for now try even just one of the things I talked about but more importantly tweak it to see what actually works for you and your lifestyle but if you'd like some more personalized help getting started my new built with science Plus app will take care of all the guest work for you it'll create your daily checklist your weekly workouts and your nutritional plan based on your goal it's even got a meal scanner where you can just snap your breakfast and it'll estimate and log all the ingredients and calories for you just like countless others have simply
• 15:00 - 15:30 follow what it tells you every day and I guarantee you'll get amazing results you can sign up for 2 weeks free today over at builtwith science.com and then give this video watch next for a full body workout routine you can get started with today to maximize muscle growth thanks so much for watching I'll see you next time