Winter sports may get you thinking about skiing, snowboarding or ice skating but many people play sports all year round, even in winter. Just because it’s cold outside doesn’t mean that we have to stop exercising but what can be done to prepare and to enhance our winter workouts?
1. Dress Warm For Winter Sports
It may seem like a no-brainer to wrap up warmer but although your body temperature rises when exercising and it may seem a good idea to wear less, it’s not. Layers become your best friend during winter workouts!
A base layer like wool or Thermax will avoid trapping moisture and will trap heat instead, fleece or wool makes a good middle layer and shouldnt be too tight or loose. Finally the outer layer should ideally be wind or water resistant, providing ventilation without making you feel cold.
2. Warm Up Exercises For Winter Workouts
Moving increases your heart rate and essentially keeps us warmer due to the blood circulation around the body. Warm up exercises are a vital part of any exercise or sport but even more so before your winter workout or playing sports in winter.
Warm up exercises will also prevent strain and injury when muscles are a lot stiffer in colder temperatures. Static stretches across your whole body, jumping jacks and squats are just a few that get our body warmed up quickly and ready for our workout or to play sports.
3. Stay Hydrated In All Seasons
It’s important to stay hydrated no matter the weather when exercising. You may not feel as dehydrated during exercising over winter or colder months though. It’s still essential that you hydrate and ensure that your body isn’t losing too much water too quickly. This also doesn’t necessarily mean through sweating but purely through breathing. When you breathe in cold air it simply holds less moisture resulting in dehydration.
4. Stay Warm When Resting
Body temperature can decrease dramatically when we’re stationary and our heart rate can also decline rather quickly. Even more so when exercising or playing sports in winter. This is not what we want, continue to move even if it’s slowly or gradually, this will bring both your temperature and heart rate down slowly and safely. Regulating your body temperature by also adding an extra layer when cooling down with stretches post-workout.
5. Prepare Nutritionally
Exercising in cold weather burns fat purely because of burning more calories in order to stay warm. The cold can put more strain on your metabolism, working harder to generate more heat and muscle contractions are more difficult, requiring our muscles to work harder.
Therefore, glucose is used a lot quicker and our energy levels become depleted. Ensure that you continue to eat a balanced diet but consume more carbohydrates throughout training. Don’t see them as a negative, they are what fuels your body and essentially will help to keep warm during winter exercises and sports. Protein will also help muscle recovery and generation. Whole grain cereal, fruit and greek yoghurt for example would be great pre-workout in the winter or colder temperatures.
Preparing and maintaining our performance when doing sports over winter is important, especially if training or exercising is not seasonal. Ensuring that you also have the right surface and equipment when playing winter sports is crucial to avoid muscle strain, injuries and also to enhance performance.
We supply installations for multi-sports surfaces and have installed and resurfaced many multi-sports surfaces for schools, colleges, universities and sports clubs and sports centres over the years. Take a look at our case studies and get in touch with our team for expert knowledge and advice. If you’re in need of a new sports system either for the winter months or the busier summer period, winter is actually the perfect time to take action.
