I just went through all the postings on this topic and have a few thoughts. I’ve been doing the early morning thing since my son was born almost 7 years ago. Here are my thoughts:
If you want high value early morning workouts, STOP any evening workouts. It is too hard to do an evening workout, shovel food in your stomach, go to sleep and get up for another early morning workout. You need to get your metabolism and daily cycles set up to have a peak in the early morning and be ramping down for the rest of the day
Go to sleep 8 hours before you plan to wake up. Try to go to sleep the same time and wake up the same time every day (+/- 30 min). This makes the morning easy. As others mentioned, if you can take a half hour powerknap on weekend.
Try to wake up 45-60 min before you start working out, and eat a complete breakfast. Not just a couple of coffees and a toast. A complete bowl of cereal. You need to top up before the workout.
Start your workout slow. If you can make the workout 2 hours. You will find that the last 90 min are awesome. Don’t push the pace for at least 30 min. Example workout is 30 min warmup ride on the rollers followed by 90 min run, 120 min bike ride with 30 min sub 24 kph at the beginning, ride 30 min easy to the pool, swim 60 min, ride 30 min to work. I have the advantage that my wife gets my son ready for school and takes him there, so I have the full morning to train (up to 9 am when I get to work).
If you can, incorporate the workout into your commute to work. For example, if you live 20K from work, drive in Mon and leave all your stuff there for Tue including your bike, then run in on Tue morning and spin home really easy on Tue afternoon (don’t hammer Tue after work, or you will be toast for Wed morning workout).
Don’t stretch first thing in the morning on cold muscles. If you have to spend the first 15 min of your workout time walking. Then stretch a bit and start you real workout.
Working out in the morning is not about cramming a workout in before work. To get max benefit, you have to go into a new paradigm shift and become an “early morning person” effectively changing your entire lifestyle.
Hope this helps