Rise and grind, superstars! Why are you sleeping at 3 a.m. when you could be dunking your head into a bowl of ice-cold Saratoga bottled water?
That message is conveyed in a video, posted by the X account @tipsformenx last week, that showed a shirtless man with protruding biceps (actually, protruding everything) recapping in minute detail his morning routine. It has since been shared, and shared, and shared. As of Monday, it is up to more than 700 million views on X alone.
The man is Ashton Hall, a Florida-based fitness trainer who often posts videos of his daily routine. That is fairly common among lifestyle influencers. But since January, Mr. Hall’s routine has included dunking his head into a bowl of Saratoga Spring Water — let’s call it a Saratoga Splash.
These videos have invited widespread mockery and parodies, including from sports teams and politicians. On Monday, the X account of Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted a screenshot of Mr. Hall plunging his head into cold water and likened him to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who came under fire for discussing war plans on a commercial messaging app in a group chat that included a journalist.
Mr. Hall, a former college football running back, has a large audience. On TikTok, he has 4.8 million followers. He has almost double that on Instagram, and another 2.96 million subscribers on YouTube.
Videos like the ones Mr. Hall posts are becoming increasingly common and popular in recent years: They’re short, easily digestible and show an idealized version of how a man should live.
Some young men are taking notice. Husam Hasan, a 23-year-old fitness influencer based out of Calgary, Alberta, posted a video weeks before Mr. Hall’s widely viewed one that was a parody of a day in the life of a so-called Gymfluencer. It included a flight time-stamped one minute before a workout, as well as a homage to Mr. Hall’s previous posts showing the ice water dunk. Mr. Hasan’s video is up to 1.5 million likes and counting, but he also counts himself as a fan of Mr. Hall.
“It works,” Mr. Hasan said in an interview. “I dip my face in cold water. I was like, ‘I see why everybody is doing it now.’”
He added, “It wakes you up and makes you ready to tackle the day in a positive manner.”
It is hard to pick out just one highlight from last week’s video. There’s the 3:54 a.m. swig of Saratoga Spring Water. The 4:04 push-ups, followed by another Saratoga Swig. Some meditating. A 5:47 head dunk into a bowl of Saratoga water. A treadmill sprint. A dive into a rooftop swimming pool. (Ignore the sign in the back that says “No Diving.” Also that he takes off in the dive at 7:36 but lands in the pool at 7:40.) Rubbing a banana peel on his face (?). Another ice dunk. And then the day really begins with Mr. Hall apparently on a call saying a line that has since entered the cultural lexicon: “So, looking at it, bro, we’ve gotta go ahead and get in at least 10,000.”
The mockery from others, Mr. Hasan said, came from the routine being “obviously” unrealistic.
“Everyone is like, ‘OK, there’s no way you can do so much and film,’” Mr. Hasan said.
Mr. Hall did not respond to a request for an interview. A spokesperson for Primo Brands, Saratoga’s parent company, said Mr. Hall is not a paid spokesperson and has never received compensation from Primo Brands for his posts.
“As a marketer, you’ve done something right when your brand becomes a part of someone’s life and their story,” Kheri Tillman, the chief marketing officer for Primo Brands, said in a statement.
The company declined to comment on the effect of Mr. Hall’s videos on their business.
Nonetheless, Mr. Hall’s content has drawn attention. Joseph Phillips, a 26-year-old content creator from Memphis, who goes by the name @JoeFromYouTube, posted his own parody of Mr. Hall, with several clips timestamped before dawn — despite the outdoors showing daylight. The video has almost 11 million views.
Mr. Phillips said he didn’t intend to disrespect Mr. Hall in any way. He just wanted to display his own flavor of dunking his face into cold water. In fact, he said, he was “amazed” by Mr. Hall’s morning routine, and said his appeal was aspirational.
“People want to live better,” Mr. Phillips said. “There’s a lot of people who want to be fit. And they see him taking care of his body every day, and they see how wealthy he is.”
Mr. Hall’s videos, in the context of a broader discussion around masculinity, particularly after the 2024 election, are a fascinating case study. A column in the British media publication Unherd called Mr. Hall’s routine “a bleak new masculinity.” In The Cut, the routine prompted a writer to ask — once again — if men were OK.
Makana Chock, a communications professor at Syracuse University who studies social media, said that there was a “dark side” to some of the messaging that influencers such as Mr. Hall put out. In the video, women appear only to serve Mr. Hall in some way — whether it is his breakfast or his towel. She said the videos overlap with messages “from some of the more toxic masculinity sites,” which preach “that this type of look and this type of discipline is somehow inherent in being a real man, which is not particularly achievable for most men.”
In the meantime, Mr. Hall posted a new morning routine on Monday. It includes similar moments, though in this one, he shows himself scrolling through the memes and parodies of himself.
“You’ve made your first 10,000,” Mr. Hall says in the video. “Congratulations. We’ve got to do at least 20, bro.”
