Morning People: Sebastian Kienle

A three-time European Champion, two-time 70.3 World Champion and winner of the World Championship, Sebastian Kienle clinched every title an IRONMAN can before retiring from the sport in December 2023. Now, he’s the co-founder of Kick-Ass Sports, a training program for triathletes, a podcaster and commentator, and devoted dad to his three-year-old son.

He’s also become passionate about HYROX, a fitness race that combines eight kilometers of running with eight functional workout stations. We caught up with Kienle, at home in Germany, to talk about his morning hacks, the way fatherhood has changed how he views just about everything, and the lake he pictures when he’s trying to fall asleep.

“My morning routine is a bit more structured since the little one is going to the kindergarten at half past eight,” says Kienle, who quietly gets up at 7:15 (thanks to a vibrating alarm function on his wearable that doesn’t wake anyone else), for a 15-minute head start on the day. This is a substantially different routine than he used to have: “No waking up at four a.m. to get in four hours of training before everybody else wakes up. No superhero stuff here.”

“Morning means control to me,” he says. “When you wake up, you are in control of what you do. The longer the day goes on, the more outside things are taking control and you have to manage the chaos."

These days, his first step in the morning is his AG1, a habit since 2019, which he dilutes in extra water. “I have it with maybe 600 milliliters of water just to top off on liquids, and then I'll have my coffee. One of the things that I was really bad about in the past was sleepwalking to the coffee machine, and then realizing I actually didn't drink anything else until 11 or so.”

Next: Taking a look at the notebook he keeps beside the bed for pre-sleep brain offloads, and starting to tackle the list. Then Nino is up, and the chaos of life with a toddler begins — but with a helpful adult-to-kid ratio: “We live with my in-laws, so it's four against one. The little boy has no choice but to be on time. I would say compared to some of the normal people I know, I think our morning process is relatively relaxed.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of things are more relaxed in retirement, including Kienle’s relationships to his friends and family, and a body he used to have to treat “like a raw egg.”

“Whenever I had an intense training week, I wasn't hanging out with friends, because you're always afraid of getting sick.” And being a present parent to a three-year-old is almost impossible for a high-performance athlete, he says. “I think there is no other way than to go away to a training camp,” he says. “You would constantly be in a bad mood [at home] because you're afraid of getting sick. And then you think of your kid as something that is putting you, in your career and performance, in danger.”

Retirement came with its challenges, too. “They say as an athlete, you die twice,” says Kienle. “You invest so much in the sport, and your life is the sport. There’s nothing else. And when you stop, it’s super, super tough, because all the drive, all the meaning in your life is just gone. And you don’t realize until you retire that being in a very fit body that can do almost everything is something you’re just used to. But when there is no goal, then it’s very tough to just keep up the same level of exercising.”

These days, he’s relishing the new challenges that HYROX offers him after 20 years of triathlons. “You always live in the belief that you can do better next year, you can do better next session, you can do better next rep. You always try to be a little bit better,” he says. “And at one point, you realize, oh, you're not getting better anymore. You're actually fighting not to get worse. With this new sport, especially since it's a little bit more on the strength side, you see progress again. And that's something that feels great.”

Kienle loves, too, how the training is different with HYROX – especially after the hours-long workouts demanded by triathlons. Now, even quick 20-minute workouts are beneficial, and he will often do one right before bed to put his body into an exhausted state. He says “I need to be physically tired to actually fall asleep.”

Another sleep habit Kienle relies on is progressive muscle relaxation, while imagining a beautiful lake. The lake he pictures is in Québec’s Mont Tremblant. “I still have a picture of that in my head. I once sat there for a very long time after a race. So that calms me down and helps me fall asleep.”

Sebastian Kienle’s First Principles

• Take advantage of the control available at the start of the day
• When life changes, set new goals to keep up your momentum
• Rituals for relaxing at the end of the day will help sleep (and sleep helps everything)