Hey Coach: I'm Not a 5 A.M. Person

There's a specific kind of frustration that comes from knowing exercise matters to you, genuinely wanting to do it, and still not being able to find a version that fits without taking something else you value with it.

Let’s talk about what happens when the routine that used to work no longer fits the life you actually have and how to build out flexibility for the days when time and energy change underneath you.

This edition of Hey Coach is for the working parents, the schedule-jugglers, and everyone who's cycled through every time slot in their calendar and still can't make it stick.

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Hey Coach,

I have a 5-year-old, work full time, and cannot figure out where exercise is supposed to fit anymore.

Before I had a kid, I went to the gym after work four days a week. Now after work is daycare pickup, dinner, cleanup, bath, bedtime—and suddenly it's 8:30 or 9.

I keep deciding I'm going to become a "5 a.m. workout person," despite being absolutely not a 5 a.m. person. I can usually pull it off for a few days, but by Thursday I'm exhausted and turn off the alarm. If my daughter has been up during the night, forget it. After I miss a couple of workouts, I tend to decide the whole week is shot.

I've also tried working out before daycare pickup, after bedtime, doing 30-minute Peloton workouts at home, and blocking workouts on my work calendar.

The home workouts help because there's no commute. I've also been pretty successful doing a 20-minute workout on Saturday morning while my husband hangs out with our daughter.

I want to exercise three times a week without feeling like I have to choose between exercise, sleep, and time with my daughter. Exercise used to make me feel strong and like myself. I miss having something that was mine. I also want my daughter to grow up seeing exercise as a normal part of life.

I think part of the problem is that I still feel like a "real" workout needs to be 45–60 minutes, because that's what I used to do.

-Not a 5 A.M. Person

Table of Contents

Hey Not a 5 A.M. Person,

I am officially, formally, and with great enthusiasm releasing you from the idea that you are failing at being a 5 a.m. workout person. Maybe early mornings actually are your only real window right now, and that is just the season you're in. What I'm releasing you from isn't the time slot—it’s the story that if it keeps falling apart, it means something is wrong with you.

You have conducted this experiment. Repeatedly. And here's what I’m hearing:

Monday: promising. Tuesday: still going. Wednesday: hanging in there. Thursday: your body lawyers up and threatens to sue.

And on the days your daughter decides 3 a.m. is actually a great time to be conscious? That puts you in an even more brutal position because now your scheduled workout directly opposes sleep, and sleep will win every single time. (Sleep is undefeated. Sleep doesn't negotiate.) 

The Real Problem (It's Not What You Think)

There are actually two things going on here, and neither of them is "I can't make myself exercise."

Problem one: the structure that used to make exercise easy doesn't exist anymore.

Before your daughter, you had a reliable transition point. Work ended, then you went to the gym. That is a clean handoff. 

Now work ends and another shift begins—daycare pickup, dinner, cleanup, bath, bedtime…

And if you’re like any of the other parents I have worked with, I’d bet bedtime operates on the same scheduling system as airline delays: perhaps 20 minutes, perhaps two hours, good luck to everyone involved.

So you've been searching for another large, predictable block of time to replace the old one and the pattern I am noticing here is that you keep trying to put exercise into time slots that aren't reliably yours. 

Problem two: you might be asking your current life to support your old definition of a workout.

You said it yourself: somewhere in your head, a "real" workout is still 45–60 minutes. 

If 45 minutes is required before a workout "counts," then a 20-minute opening is useless. Your life can hand you perfectly usable opportunities all week long and your brain will keep returning them to sender because they're not large enough to qualify.

So, instead of that standard acting as a goal, it's functioning more like an entry fee that your current life cannot reliably pay.

Here's the thing though: buried in your submission is a small, very interesting piece of evidence. You have already found a workout that works.

Those Saturday morning workouts? Chef's kiss. You're home, your husband has your daughter handled, and for one glorious window of time - that time is YOURS.That is incredibly useful information. And instead of studying it, you've been spending your mental energy interrogating Thursday-morning you about why she hit snooze. 

What makes Saturday sessions work? The duration? The predictability? That data that is available to you there is worth so much more than "I need to try harder next week."

"I miss having something that was mine" is not a small thing

I saw this in your submission, and I highlighted it. I underlined it. I put a star next to it.

There's a version of this advice that immediately says, "Just take walks with your daughter! Make it family time!" And maybe sometimes you'll want to. That's great. 

But I'm not going to solve "I miss having something that was mine" by immediately giving that thing to your family too. You are allowed to want movement that belongs to you.You're also allowed to want your daughter to see movement as part of ordinary life. Those two things don't have to be accomplished by the exact same workout. They can coexist without cannibalizing each other.

So instead of asking yourself where can I find three 45-to-60-minute openings every week, the better question is: what would a three-workout week look like if it were designed for the life I actually have?

Here's What We're Actually Going to Do

For the next two weeks, the goal is not to become more consistent. The goal is to experiment and prototype a plan that is harder to knock over.

Right now, you have one version of a workout: the version you would do if time and energy cooperate. And when they don't, there's nowhere for the plan to go.

So instead of one workout goal, I want you to make three: Good, Better, and Best.

The idea is simple: you decide ahead of time what exercise can look like at different levels of time, energy, and capacity. Then when the day goes sideways, you don't have to choose between doing the full workout and doing nothing. You just move to the version that fits the day you're actually having.

For you, that might look something like:

BEST: The full workout you genuinely want to do when you have the time and energy. Maybe that's your familiar 45–60 minutes.

BETTER: A shorter version for the days when the window is smaller. Maybe that's the 20–30 minute Peloton workout you already know removes the commute problem.

GOOD: The smallest version you're willing to let count. 5-10 minutes of stretching out on the mat. 3 sets of ONE exercise. A walk around the block. Whatever you decide keeps you connected to exercise without asking you to steal from sleep or turn an already-chaotic morning into another obligation.

This is the part that makes this work: You have to believe that Good is not the failed version of Best.

Good counts. Better counts. Best counts.

You’re not spending every week trying to earn three Bests. The point is to have somewhere to go when Best isn't available.

Because right now, a bad night of sleep doesn't just change your workout, it can eliminate it. A long bedtime doesn't modify the plan, it destroys the plan.

A Good–Better–Best plan gives the behavior somewhere to bend instead of break.

So before next week starts, decide what each of your three versions looks like. Then, when it's time to exercise, ask one question:

What version fits today? Not, Can I do the workout or not?

Collect Your Data

There’s one more part of this experiment I want you to pay attention to. You also need to start collecting evidence that these smaller workouts are actually worth doing.

Right now, I suspect your brain has a pretty well-established hierarchy: 45–60 minutes is a real workout, and anything less is what you do when you couldn't manage the real thing.

I can tell you that a 20-minute workout counts until I’m blue in the face. What will make that belief much more convincing is your own evidence.

So after each workout—Good, Better, or Best—I want you to take about three seconds and answer one question: How do I feel now compared with before I started?

Maybe you feel stronger. More awake. Less stressed. Proud that you showed up. More like yourself. Maybe the answer is simply, I'm glad I did it.

And maybe sometimes you don't feel dramatically different at all. That's useful information too. We're gathering data, not trying to manufacture a testimonial.

You can also do a weekly check-in by asking yourself: What did showing up for these workouts give me this week?

Because “exercise is good for my health” is true, but it's also a pretty distant payoff when you're deciding whether ten minutes is worth bothering with after another night of fragmented sleep.

I felt more like myself on days I moved.

My mood was better this week.

I like feeling strong.

I was more patient in the evenings knowing I had done this for the day.

Those are rewards you can actually experience now.

And the more evidence you collect that showing up—even for the Good version—gives you something your brain values, the less exercise has to be powered by I really should get back into this and the more it can start being pulled from I know why this is worth doing for me.

What to Look For After Two Weeks

At the end of two weeks, don't just count workouts. You're not grading yourself on whether you got three checkmarks every week.

Look at what the experiment taught you:

• Which days/times turned out to be reliably yours?

• Which version did you use most often—Good, Better, or Best?

• What tended to determine which version fit that day?

• How did you feel after the Good workouts compared with the days you did nothing?

• Did having more than one version prevent a disrupted day from turning into a lost week?

• What did you notice on the days when you simply showed up?

That last question is one I use with coaching clients a lot, because I want you looking for more than proof that you can follow a plan.

I want you collecting proof about what happens when you do.

One Last Thing

Even if you don’t feel like you’ve got this all figured out, your daughter may already be learning something useful about exercise from you.

What she eventually sees, ideally, isn't a mother who never misses a workout. It's someone for whom movement matters enough to keep finding its place as life changes. Sometimes 45 minutes. Sometimes 10. Sometimes the plan gets completely blown up and you come back to it anyway.

Which is what consistency actually looks like in real life, by the way. It's an incredibly useful thing for a kid to grow up watching, and that makes exercise look pretty damn normal to me.

-Coach Brittany

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Have a health behavior dilemma you can't think your way out of? Submit it to Hey Coach [here] and your question might be selected for a future edition.

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