{"id":679225,"date":"2026-07-07T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/679225\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T21:32:08","slug":"5-expert-habits-for-smarter-workouts-and-wind-downs-from-sports-physiologist-mike-israetel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/679225\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Expert Habits for Smarter Workouts and Wind Downs from Sports Physiologist Mike Israetel"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Expert Habits<\/a>, a regular column in which thinkers, leaders, and other high performers talk about the habits and routines that help them live a better life.<\/p>\n

Does it make you a bad person to want to be attractive? That\u2019s the question that Mike Israetel<\/a> seeks to answer in his new book The Aesthetic Revolution<\/a>. The Youtube fitness influencer with a PhD in sports science (and calves bigger than most people\u2019s heads) has spent the last few years advocating for science-based lifting<\/a>, or optimizing one\u2019s workouts based on scientific studies to get the most bang from their lifting buck (a.k.a. hypertrophy<\/a>). After years of training \u201crich ass people,\u201d Isreatel learned that when clients say they want to train to be strong, they really just want to train the body parts that will make them look strong to other people.<\/p>\n

Obviously getting to that point requires a lot of effort and training, and in our 24-hour days, there\u2019s only so much you can squeeze in before pursuing an \u201caesthetic\u201d build. That\u2019s why Israetel has focused on \u201cdecision fatigue\u201d as one of his main takeaways for meeting one\u2019s fitness goals. You\u2019ve heard the term before. It\u2019s a concept that everyone from big tech bros to President Obama<\/a> have cited when explaining why they opt for a pared down wardrobe. Israetel sees eliminating the need to make decisions as a way to optimize his time for the things he cares about most.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you get is such a high level of productivity, checking all the green boxes in your life that when it comes to the weekend, you can uncork like nobody else,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Israetel\u2019s advice for achieving maximum productivity, all while maintaining your sanity.<\/p>\n

Plan meals ahead of time<\/p>\n

\u201cFor most meals<\/a>, I know what I\u2019m going to eat and I have it readily accessible. This allows me to stick to the kind of healthy, functional diet that I need and it also massively reduces decision fatigue and it also massively reduces prep time. There\u2019s a company called Megafit Meals and I get their pre-prepared meals. And so many of my meals I just pop in the microwave and they come out super healthy. I could cook my own food, but that just takes a shitload of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor example, a few days ago I was at home working in the office and I was like, \u2018I don’t have a ton of time. Should I quickly go out and get something to eat or should I eat at home?\u2019 And then I realized because I have Megafit Meals and pre-made rice packets I realize I had everything already here.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, if I go out to eat, I\u2019m still going to make good choices because I know exactly how to do that, but for most people, if you leave it to chance, the probability, especially when you\u2019re hungry, is way higher that you’re going to eat some bullshit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think having your meal situation figured out ahead of time is really good because then not only did you make the choices ahead of time, so they\u2019re by definition \u2018good choices,\u2019 you have way less time spent on doing the food thing and you don’t have to have any decision fatigue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Work out in the morning\u2014and stick to it<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the days in which you have to train hard, let\u2019s say lift weights, do one of two things: One is train in the morning. There is a lot of science on the time of the day to train and it largely comes down to this: Whenever you can make the time, whenever you can be motivated and energetic, it\u2019s just as good of a time to train as any other. So doing your fitness stuff first thing in the morning on the days in which you work out is a real good habit because it’s not a negotiation. You just start your day with the shit. And then after it\u2019s done, you go to work, you do your work stuff, and then you come home, you don’t have to worry about anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is Expert Habits, a regular column in which thinkers, leaders, and other high performers talk about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[96,6647,102,42045,56,54,55,9011],"class_list":["post-679225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-entertainment","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-life-advice","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-working-out"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}