❄️ Cold Weather And Fitness
Cold Weather Brings More Than Just Viruses. Here's How To Prep Your Fitness Around Changing Temperatures.
Good Morning!
If you’re with me in the Northeast, you’ve likely felt the drop in temperature over the past two weeks.
You are doing your best to accommodate it with warmer clothing, turning up the heat, or changing your diet.
But cold weather can affect more than just your immune systems or outfits.
The change in seasons can also contribute to increased morning drowsiness, muscle fatigue, and joint stiffness.
These cold weather hallmarks result from many different environmental factors: changes in air pressure outside, sharp temperature drops, and decreased amounts of daylight are all things to acknowledge when trying to keep your fitness routine up to par.
Why Cold Weather Awareness Matters
For those of you who plan to run or cycle outdoors even through the winter months, it’s important to note that your blood vessels will constrict tighter in an effort to send more heat to your core.
This is generally a good thing, but it also eliminates your body’s sensation of thirst.
Endurance athletes may want to be aware of dehydration when training in colder temperatures for this reason.
Even if you have a short walk to the gym, your muscles have more trouble contracting when they’re cold, so it will generally take longer to feel the same “pump” you feel after a fulfilling strength training session.
As if seasonal depression wasn’t enough of a downer.
But…it’s not all bad.
To spin it more positively, the determination and discipline it takes to trudge through cold rain, snow, or whipping wind to get your workout in builds character (as corny as that sounds) and will make the non-Day After Tomorrow-esque days seem much more manageable.
Suppose you’ve fended off a cold or sickness for long enough. In that case, your body will quickly adapt to the cold with more of these repeated workout efforts, and the willingness to get out of the house and get some UV rays with the shorter daylight hours can lend itself to better sleep if timed correctly.
Lastly, if you get intense enough workouts through the cold weather months, it’s possible your body could even get better at regulating its internal temperature.*
These are the benefits a lot of gurus tout from things like cold plunges, which most people don’t have the time to do. Why not just simulate your cold plunge by taking an early morning jog in November with some heat gear?
*The possibility of improved body temperature regulation is not a promise and can’t be accurately discerned without using thermometers or wearable temperature tracking devices.
Cold Weather and Fitness: Your Joints and Head
Barometric pressure has a surprisingly significant effect on your body, namely your joints and some of their surrounding muscles.
I was fortunate enough to learn this in my first year as a trainer when inclement weather and consistently rainy days caused two clients to frequently cancel their sessions just hours before we were supposed to meet.
It turns out barometric pressure changes — usually associated with cold weather — can cause migraines, joint stiffness, and even mild pain for those with surgically repaired limbs. One client canceled due to said migraines; the other had a metal screw in her ankle that ailed her when the temperature dropped.
WHY DOES THIS HAPPEN?
For starters, humans are roughly 60-70% fluid. And not all of that fluid is water. Some of it is synovial fluid — a slick, oily liquid that lives between our joints and facilitates the gliding of bones across each other.
If we didn’t have synovial fluid, our bones and joints would quite literally grind on each other like that Pretty Ricky song
So, if you wake up feeling like your body needs WD-40 on a rainy day, this is why. You might even experience this twofold if you’re sore from a workout the previous day.
My client with a surgically repaired ankle found out that the metal in her ankle interacted with the air pressure and her synovial fluid so that her ankle was locked in place; it was almost as if her cast from surgery was magically put back on.
My client with the migraines had a much simpler story; our brains, encapsulated by fluid and the pressurized chamber of our skull, don’t always handle changes in external pressure well.
The changes in pressure can constrict the vessels leading to our brains — most notably the sinuses — and cause terrible pain.
Getting Ahead of Cold Weather
Other methods of combatting cold weather while maintaining a robust fitness routine could include drinking more water, weaning ourselves off caffeine, and supplementing electrolytes to prevent dehydration.
For those with hectic lifestyles and those whose work doesn’t stop in rain, sleet, or snow, even more of an emphasis on overall nutrition is especially important.
Again, the body will use its internal resources to stay warm in the cold (talking to you, my fellow northeasterners). It is imperative to seek out more whole foods and less hyper-palatable, processed options when hungry.
If they aren't a staple, multivitamins, leafy greens, certain soups, and a few particular supplements should be added to your diet routine. If you’re not already a tea drinker, I highly recommend trying to start to prevent sniffles and mucous-borne illnesses.
Of course, this isn’t a call to action to get you up to the gym every day, but if it’s within your power to train a little harder during the colder months, do it for your immunity.
Let’s make a few things clear and set some affirmations for Q4 before the cold weather starts flooding our heads with self-limiting beliefs.
It’s possible to maintain your current routine all the way until 2024.
You can get mildly sick and still exercise your way back to full health.
Your body is more adaptable than you think to cold weather. Ask our Trans-Siberian ancestors.
A Daily Dose of WTF: A Cold Weather Survival Story
While my newsletter generally steers clear of the hardo-fitness mindset of “train no matter what, all day, every day, 365 days a year,” I think it’s worth putting some things in perspective so that you don’t rationalize yourself away from fitness in the winter months.
Navy SEALS have some of the most brutal cold weather training protocols out there.
In my first years as a trainer, seeking the most lucrative path in my field, I looked up how much military fitness coaches made and what kind of torture they subjected trainees to.
I was quickly scared away from that career path.
Along with holding onto a rope with your fellow trainees at 4 a.m. while the cold-crashing East Coast waves smack you in the face, SEALS are quite frequently thrown out into the arctic tundras of the world and forced to survive there before they do anything even remotely heroic.
Chadd Wright’s Alaska adventures are a freakishly painful example of the resilience of the SEALS. If you have 15 minutes to be wowed, I’d recommend listening to how he fared in the world's Northern Hemisphere.
Happy (Early) Holidays — Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn Ya!
The holidays are probably a more significant distraction from fitness than any snowstorm, but I can’t always be that trainer who discourages people from enjoying time off with their families.
Hopefully, with this information about cold weather and what it does to your body, you can rally through October and November and kick some ass these last few months of 2023.
See you Friday.