At 3:52 am, Ashton Hall’s morning begins. By 7:30, he’s journaled, meditated, prayed, run, swum, lifted, and dunked his face in ice water – twice. It’s wellness theatre at its finest. But is it effective?
In a recent video, Dr Mike Israetel of RP Strength breaks it down in his trademark sardonic tone. Straight off the bat, he’s doubtful: ‘The best morning routine is the shortest one that gets your ass to work or gets your ass training.’ Hall, meanwhile, spends over two hours on his ritual before touching a dumbbell or powering up his laptop.
The (surprising) first red flag? Speed-running his tooth brushing. ‘Problem: he only took one minute or less to brush his teeth… do you take a minute to brush your teeth? No – it’s longer, right?’ Dr Mike points out that despite the time-consuming rigour of the rest of his routine, the video’s timestamp seems to suggest that Hall spends less than 60 seconds brushing. ‘You gotta be thorough! Dental hygiene, sir.’
Then comes the notorious blue bottled water, which Dr Mike absolutely dunks on: ‘Thinking you need to buy spring water in a bottle is one of the greatest cons of all time. In the United States it’s functionally undistinguishable from the fanciest bottled stuff imaginable.’ He adds, ‘You’re paying $4 for a bottle for water you can’t tell apart from the stuff that comes out for free.’
Next we arrive at the 4:00 am push-ups – bottom-end partials. Dr Mike is not impressed: ‘For vibes, this video is a 10 out of 10. For functionally recommending anything… there’s just not a lot to learn.’ He questions everything: ‘Does he do this every day? How many push-ups did he do? How close to failure? How does this integrate with the rest of his weight training?’
The final nail: ‘Random push-ups are something you do in high school when you first learn about lifting – and then kind of never again after that. Maybe in the military, when they punish you. But once you grow up, you typically just save your chest and tricep and shoulder training for the gym.’
As for the icy face dips themselves, if you’re expecting a breakdown of the physiology behind this part of Hall’s routine – perhaps the part he’s become most infamous for – think again. ‘I honestly have no idea why he’s doing this,’ Dr Mike says, confused.
What follows is more of the same: journaling with pen and paper, aesthetic-looking jump squats, suitcase squats with dumbbells that wouldn’t challenge your average lifter. Still, credit where it’s due. ‘Those pull-ups? Full dead hang. Great execution,’ Dr Mike admits. ‘He’s clearly strong. We’ve seen him squat 315 with Tristan Lee. So we know this stuff isn’t what got him big – it’s what looks good on TikTok.’
Dr Mike continue to point out that Hall’s overly-developed physique wasn’t built on 4 am push-ups, face dunks and light squats, but consistent hard work, heavy weights, and progressive overload. ‘This is performative lifting,’ Dr Mike says. ‘He didn’t get this jacked training this easy.’
Final verdict? ‘10 out of 10 for vibes. Maybe three out of 10 for getting jacked.’
If you’re chasing a Tik-Tok friendly aesthetic, you could tape your mouth and dunk your face. But if you want results? Save the time. Train harder. Lift heavier. Ditch the bottle.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.