Olympic gold medal gymnast Shawn Johnson East, and her husband Andrew East, a former NFL player, are, quite frankly, power couple goals.
In addition to being a decorated gymnast who competed for Team USA at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Shawn is also a New York Times best-selling author, and was a Yahoo sports correspondent for the 2024 Olympics. Together, Shawn and Andrew have a podcast, and are active on Instagram sharing fun physical challenges and relatable family content.
With three kids under four, it’s important for them to have a scheduled morning plan—but it definitely varies from day to day.
“This is our aspirational morning, but it doesn’t look like this every day, by any means,” Andrew tells Well+Good. “We call our morning routine the opening ceremonies, with our long list of things that need to be done with the kids and the dog. One of the intentional things we’ve done is schedule in time for each of us to meet our requirements.”
We caught up with Shawn and Andrew to learn how they manage their mornings and make it all seem so easy.
Andrew kicks off the morning with a workout
Andrew usually wakes up early around 5 a.m. for his workout and will also do a sauna and an ice bath. We don’t really work out together. We allow each other space to do that. Later, I’ll get in my workout.
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Then, they have coffee together
We start our morning out with our coffee, and if we can, we also take some time to connect. We love our Breville coffee maker. Ideally we have 10 minutes to sit down together and read a morning excerpt to start the day off with some reflection and a time of thought with each other.
Next, they meal prep for the day
Before the chaos starts and the unpredictability of kids pops up, we try to get their breakfast and lunches made before they wake up. We pack their lunches in the Rubbermaid Brilliance food storage containers.
These containers are a great way to keep everything organized, and when you have little kids around to consider everything a throwable item, the fact that they’re shatterproof is fantastic. We did a whole series of videos about what they could withstand, and it was a blast! We got to chuck them from high heights, and they didn’t break. These containers are also leakproof—even with spaghetti.
Then, it’s breakfast time for the kids and prep for school
Our daughter loves the chickpea chocolate chip peanut butter muffins that we get from the farmer’s market, and our son likes eggs, bananas, and peanut butter. After breakfast we get the kids ready for school and pack up their Stoney Clover Lane backpacks.
It’s now Shawn’s turn to work out and eat breakfast
After we get the first round done with the kids, I’ll exercise and have breakfast. My go-to breakfast is a thick piece of sourdough bread with butter and a fried egg. I also have a hack for scrambled eggs: cottage cheese. I’ve been putting cottage cheese in my eggs for years, and it’s the best.
Finally, it’s time to get to work
We try really hard to get our work done from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. or intermittently throughout the day while the kids are doing an activity or are at school. We also try to balance as much kid time within the work time as we can.
One thing we’ve learned is not to do both at the same time. At first we were trying to multitask and reply to emails and do Zoom calls with the kids running around, and you’re not able to be present in either. This resulted in a lot of frustration.
We’re great at tapping each other in and out when work needs to be done because we want to be with the kids as much as we can. The best way to do that is to have a fluid system that we communicate through well.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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