A benign, perfectly sculpted picture of vitality... or the palatable face of toxic masculinity?

The viral response to US influencer Ashton Hall's morning routine shows that the manosphere is now mainstream

- Sarah Manavis

How does the perfect morning begin? With gentle stretching, a coffee in bed? It could be a walk in the sun, a hot breakfast or simply managing to spend the first 20 minutes off your phone before spending the next 20 on Instagram. Lately, it may feel like the answer is being more productive.

The optimised morning routine has become a near-mythical ideal for young people, sold by fitness influencers posting obsessively about their 5.30am starts, claiming to finish their weight training, macronutrient-rich meals and emails before our first alarm promising that everything in your life would be better if you, too, had the discipline to just get up early.

Our feelings of inadequacy in response to this trend may have reached new heights last month, after the viral morning routine from the US fitness influencer Ashton Hall. The video features him getting up at 3.52am, plunging his face into multiple ice baths, following a skincare routine involving banana peel, meditating, journaling and completing several workouts to maintain his ripped physique. Female staff swarm around in the background, bringing towels and ice, preparing him breakfast and delivering branded Saratoga glass water bottles often only seen as a pair of hands.

In the caption on TikTok and Instagram, Hall says this routine "changed his life"; warning that "sin lives late at night" and to deal with "a weak mind, bad decisions or lack of productivity", his followers should go to sleep early and spend the first four hours of the day practising this grimly rigid schedule. You might have already seen this video: at the time of writing, it has been viewed more than 900m times across various platforms.