I have recently been reading “Be Like the Best” by Anthony Renna. The book is a compilation on interviews between Renna and 50 of the World’s leading Fitness Coaches/Experts. The main focus is looking at the actions the best incorporate, what do they do that makes them successful? One very strong correlation these highly success coaches have is the concept of winning the morning. Every morning they have a process…a system that sets them up for the day…to ensure they win the day and have continual success.

Here is the thing…winning the morning starts the night before…a night routine that will ensure you are getting the sleep needed to continually get up and perform the morning process.

A long term and consistent morning routine is built from a night time process that sets the next day up ensuring you are fully rested through adequate sleep.

Getting enough sleep is very important, just as important as nutrition and exercise when it comes to improving your health, performance (in all areas of life), and body composition.

Good sleep helps our bodies and minds recover, keeping us lean, happy, mentally focused, and healthy while bad sleep presents a number of negative affects including:

• makes it harder to get and stay lean;
• makes it harder to gain and keep muscle and other lean mass;
• disrupts hormones;
• ages us faster;
• increases our risk of chronic illness;
• drains our focus/concentration
• and kills our mojo.

How can you create your own nightly routine? There a few really simple things we can do to help with our sleep, building a good night time routine may include: 

• Stop eating at least two hours before your bed time;
• Avoid alcohol. Alcohol may help you get to sleep, it will also disrupt sleep during the night;
• Set an alarm/reminder that tells you it is time to go to bed. A regular set bed time is a really important factor in good sleep;
• Switch off screens a minimum of one hour before sleep;
• Make your environment into a sleep haven, install black-out curtains and make sure the room is cool (hot rooms inhibit sleep).

If you want to win the day, then you must first win the night. The creation of a night time routine is a necessary action to make the next sunlight hours productive hours.