Tips for exercise during the winter....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 11-16-2010

Between colds, flu, rain, sleet, snow, and more dark hours, many kinds of exercise work less well or even become dangerous during the winter.

But if you stop exercising during the winter you lose all kinds of health benefits.

Not exercising during the winter runs the risk of not resuming after the winter is over.

And, some health benefits of regular exercise we now know are cumulative. If you stop during the winter, after five years instead of having the cumulative benefit of 5 years of regular exercise, you’ll only have the benefits of nine months worth five times.

Lastly, during the winter if you don’t keep up regular exercise, you are MORE likely to have a cold and have it be a bad one that lasts longer. You’ll be far more likely to gain some extra fat over the holidays. And, your sex life will likely be worse. Your protection from heart disease, mental decline, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers will be less. Worse, you’ll be more likely to get SAD or winter depression. Yikes!

But there are several ways to keep exercising that do work during the winter.

The three categories are exercise at home; noontime walks when it’s safe to take them, and some winter exercise that works well outside.

Each of these three works and has real benefits.

1. Exercise at home, particularly brief sessions first thing in the morning, is THE best way for most people to ensure getting regular exercise all year round.

If you already do it, just keep doing it during the winter. But, if you have been a runner or hiker or someone who plays tennis but during the winter it’s too cold or icy or rainy or dark, by all means add some indoor exercise.

(If you catch colds easily, it can be better to exercise at home instead of at the gym in the winter also.)

Here are some ideas.

Here’s what I do. With one exception, all I use personally are a couple of folding chairs; and I lay down a towel on the rug in one room for exercises where I lie down. I have a small set of single, fixed weight dumbbells – just one at each weight. I have a jump rope and a Nordic Track. I also recently bought a single kettlebell. With that equipment such as it is I do strength training and interval cardio.

I’ve found that by doing bodyweight exercises and by using several dumbbells one at a time, I can get a good workout. I only use a few dumbbells because instead of doing exercises with a dumbbell in each hand and waiting between sets, I do exercises with my left hand and then my right hand and then immediately do the next exercise the same way and so on.

I only stop between every few sets to write down the exercises in my log book or to catch my breath after my most intense sets such as my interval cardio style 4 sets of abdominal exercises without stopping in between the parts and doing fast pushups until I can’t do any more.

This gives me some interval cardio while I do my strength training and is a very time efficient way to exercise.

In my 15 to 30 minute sets each day I do about as much exercise as many people do at the gym in twice that time plus the time it takes to go there and back.

I also do upper body exercises Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday & leg exercises Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

I do jump rope for a few minutes after work on most Monday and Wednesday evenings before I eat or do anything else. And, though I can no longer stand up to three longer sessions each week, on Saturdays when I usually have the time, I do an intense 10 minute session on my Nordic Track – interval cardio style. (The jump rope sessions I recently added got me in enough better shape, I began to set personal records doing my Nordic Track.)

I’m achievement oriented and have a background in strength training.

So, for those of you for whom my style of program is a bit on the boring or too organized style, here are some other ideas.

Aerobic dancing and exercises while watching a video with music you like works well also.

Doing exercise to music you like on a minitrampoline has worked well for some people. Check out the urban rebounder at www.urbanrebounder.com . Last time I looked, you could buy one new for less than $160. This is lower impact and easier to do than jumping rope. And it’s easier to do to your favorite rock music.

If you can afford one and have the space, you can also get a stationary bike or treadmill, and you can use it while you watch TV. If you speed up during the commercials, you can even get an interval cardio effect without distracting you from your shows too much! This is also a way to find time or find extra time to do exercise or more exercise.

2. Besides taking at least 2,000 iu a day of vitamin D3—and 5,000 iu a day or a bit more may be better, a surprisingly effective way to prevent SAD, seasonal affective disorder, caused in some people by too little sunlight, is to get a noontime walk most days or most weekdays.

As long as you can fit it in, have a safe place to walk outside, and the weather is safe to walk in, this works very well.

The key to this is that there is more actual sunlight on a dark and overcast and even rainy or snowy day at noontime than you can get in an expensive light box.

This is a startling effect but it’s real. It seems your eyes adapt so well to the light level you are in, it seems dark or not very light at such times. But if you get a photographer’s light meter, you can check it out. There is not just a lot more light at such times than it looks, there’s something like 10 to 100 times more light than it looks like there is.

Even a 10 minute walk at or near noon on four days a week can help. Just skip the days when it’s too cold or wet or when you’d be too hard for drivers to see or the pavement is too icy.

3. Snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and skating at an outdoor rink can sometimes work well in winter on some days or weekend days.

These can be good to great exercises depending on how in shape you are, how vigorously you do them, and for how long you do them.

If you do snow shoeing or cross country skiing, be sure to have a cell phone with charged batteries with you. And, it’s dramatically safer if you do them with a buddy who also has such a cell phone.

Downhill skiing and sledding can be fun.

But only do them in safe places and stop doing them before you get even a little overtired or too late in the day.

(You want it to still be light when you are getting back inside. So that’s a second reason to not do them too late in the day. This also helps prevent you running into a rock or tree stump it was too dark to see.)

Ice skating on outdoor rinks can work well. Some of them may even have music you like playing.

Between these three ways, it is quite doable to exercise all winter long.

(And, there’s more. If you live where you have access; it’s safe to drive there; and you have the time, you can also go to exercise classes, martial arts classes, and to the gym. In most places where such things exist, they operate year round.)