In recent years, the 4 a.m. wake-up has been the domain of world-striding executives and businesspeople. Disney CEO Bob Iger famously begins his day with a predawn workout. Apple CEO Tim Cook famously deals with emails from customers before sunrise. “There’s almost a kind of arms race between different executives and self-styled business leaders over who can claim the highest average workload,” said Erik Baker, author of “Make Your Own Job: How the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic Exhausted America.”

But in March, the 4 a.m. wake-up achieved new status after a viral video showed a very muscular man named Ashton Hall performing a morning routine that involved mouth tape, an ice bath filled with bottled Saratoga water, and a banana peel rubbed across his face—all beginning at 3:55 a.m.