This Is the Way

The gym at 4 AM feels like a secret club.

It’s the same people, mostly. The same handful of cars in the lot when I pull in, the same nods of acknowledgement as people walk past each other in the early dim, the same quiet hum of equipment that hasn’t woken up all the way yet. Nobody at 4 AM is there to socialize. Everyone is there to get in, get their work done, and get on with their life. I’m no different.

For the first thirty or forty-five minutes, that’s the whole vibe. Then the more varied crowed starts trickling in — the 5 AM regulars, the people on their way to early shifts, the ones who couldn’t quite get themselves out the door at four. The atmosphere shifts subtly when that happens. Not worse. Just busier. Less sanctuary, more gym.

Fridays are the quietest. I can be almost halfway through my lifting workout before the place starts to feel populated. I don’t know why Friday specifically, but I’ve stopped asking. I just enjoy it.

Here is what my morning actually look like, in order:

I fall asleep by 9 PM. I sleep hard, but I sleep short — usually only four or five hours at a stretch before I’m fully awake at 1 or 2 AM. I’ve stopped fighting it. I call it managed insomnia, which sounds nicer than calling it what it is, but it works for me. The early hours give me time to be quiet, to read, to start a protein shake and take my supplements. By the time the gym unlocks the front door at 4 AM sharp, I am already in the parking lot.

Lifting Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Thirty-five minutes or so of Level 2 cardio on the elliptical every day, including the lifting days. I’m usually done with everything by 5:30 AM.

About ninety minutes is all I can really handle in a given day. Between sets, I’m not thinking about anything profound. I’m mapping the rest of my workout in my head — how many lifts I have left, how many minutes of cardio remain. That’s it. No spiraling about the job search. No replaying old mistakes. No worrying about Melinda or the dogs or money or any of the things that can absolutely own my brain at other hours of the day. The workout keeps me grounded in something physical and immediate. I think that’s the actual point of it, more than anything else the workout accomplishes.

After the gym I drive home, feed the dogs, cool down for a few minutes, and shower. By then it’s not quite seven. I head upstairs to my office and start going through emails, checking LinkedIn for new postings, and doing what I’ve come to think of as the data work — weighing in, logging the mornings lifts in Hevy, screenshotting my Apple Fitness summary, feeding all of it into AI for analysis. My therapist worried that daily weigh-ins would feed my anxiety. So far they haven’t. I’ve started enjoying the small fluctuations, the way the line trends down even when individual days don’t. If the number goes up for a day, I chalk it up to water or digestion and move on. The scale stopped having power over me somewhere around February.

By 7:30 or 8 AM I head back downstairs as Melinda is waking up. I make us coffee. We sit on the couch for a bit. Then she starts her day and I go back upstairs to continue mine — job search, freelance work, whatever else needs handling. By early afternoon those 4 AM mornings catch up with me and I usually take a nap. The evening is dinner, dogs, and time with Melinda.

That’s it. That’s the whole routine. There’s nothing magic about it.

People assume the hard part of a routine like this is discipline. It’s not. The hard part is building it. Once it’s built, you don’t have to decide every morning whether you’re going to the gym. You’re just going. The decision was made months ago. Your job in the present is to honor it.

Of course there are mornings I don’t want to go. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But those morning are fewer and further between than they were in past restarts, and they’re almost never about motivation. They’re about whether I’m physically well enough or awake enough. I haven’t gotten sick yet on this journey, knock on every piece of wood within reach. And when I’m tired, I’ve learned a small trick: I get in the car. I drive to the gym. I wait in the parking lot for it to open.

Because as long as I’m in the parking lot, I’m getting a workout in.

Since February, I’ve missed exactly zero lifting workouts. I’ve skipped two cardio sessions. One was because I had a rip in my shorts that was chafing me badly enough that I called it. The other was an AI-recommended skip — I had a fasted lab draw scheduled for the weight loss clinic that morning, and pushing my body through cardio before bloodwork would have skewed the results. So I stayed home and went to the lab instead.

That’s the entire failure log. Two cardio sessions in four months.

I don’t say that to brag. I say it because if you’d told me a year ago that I’d run a streak like that, I would have laughed in your face. I had quit gym memberships I’d held for a year after six visits. I had bailed on workout plans after a week. The streak isn’t impressive because of the discipline. It’s impressive because of who I used to be — and because of how quickly that person can come back if I let him.

I don’t have a name for this routine. To me, it’s just the way it is.

This is the way.