How the Cold Weather Affects Your Workouts and How to Use it to Your Benefit
There’s no doubt that the onset of winter presents an extra challenge for people who work out. The temperature plummets, the skies open up and it gets harder to get out of bed in the morning. But it’s not all bad. There are some training benefits to working out in the cold weather.
Let’s investigate.
How The Cold Affects your Training
Greater Demands on the Heart
Your heart has to work harder to pump the blood around your body when you train in cold weather. That’s because you, like all humans, are warm-blooded. When you get cold, your veins and arteries will tighten. This constricts blood circulation, causing your heart to pump harder to keep up the supply.
In the cold weather, your blood thickens. As you can imagine, a thicker liquid is harder to move, so, once again, the heart has to work harder to provide your working muscles with the oxygen and nutrients needed to fuel your workout.
Tighter Muscles
The cold weather doesn’t just cause your arteries and veins to tighten. It does the same thing for your skeletal muscles. Those muscles will become more tense, which will make you more susceptible to a training injury. That is why it is especially important to thoroughly warm up with light cardio and dynamic stretching.
Lower Levels of Muscle Function
Cold weather causes your nerve impulses to slow down. What that means is that it takes longer for the message to get from your brain to your muscles. The colder it gets, the lower levels of muscle dexterity you will also have.
Greater Calorie Burn
Because your body has to work harder in colder weather, you will burn more calories over the course of a workout. However, the flip side of that benefit is that, because you are expending more energy, you will fatigue faster. That’s why you should consume more fast acting carbs before your workout when the temperature drops.
Faster Dehydration
Cold air is drier than warm air. That means that you are taking in less moisture. That makes it harder to compensate for the water that is lost through sweat and moisture.
How to Use Cold Weather Training to Your Benefit
Focus on Cardio for Fat Loss
Fat loss essentially comes to caloric balance. Training in cold weather helps you burn more calories for the same amount of exercise, so make use of that advantage by doing your cardio during the coldest part of the day.
Do More Endurance Training
Research shows that warm temperatures can significantly hinder your endurance training capacity. Colder temperatures, on the other hand, actually enhance your endurance capacity. So, whether it’s endurance cardio running trails or endurance muscular workouts in the gym, do more of it in the cold weather for enhanced results.
Get the Right Temperature Balance
While training in the cold can benefit your workouts, you don’t want it to be so cold that your body is going to be severely impacted. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends stopping training if the temperature gets to the teeth chattering stage.
Be sure, too, to dress for the conditions. Look for lightweight fabrics that are temperature and sweat wicking.
Wrap Up
Even though training in the cold weather presents an extra challenge, you can benefit from the bodily adaptations that take place in response to the cooler temperature. Use the tips provided here to get the most out of your cold weather workouts.
