The Winter Training Series – PART 1

June 20, 2012 Suzie

Why training in Winter is fantastic!

 

The cooler months are by far the best for working out.

In a nutshell, if you want to look and feel your best for summer, the best time to start is in the winter months and the sooner the better. Often people make the mistake of waiting till the weather warms up to start their training program only to find that by the time they’re seeing awesome results the summer is nearly over.

If you truly want to look and feel your best, it’s time to start training now!

 

WINTER

Winter months vary in temperature depending on what country you reside in. In Australia we are fairly lucky with our winters, depending again on what part of the country you are in. We are prone to sunny clear blue skies with crisp air that make us question if it actually is winter or not. We do however experience the lows as well, bitterly cold winds, constant rain, shortened daylight and snow.

Training in winter can have a variety of obstacles, but on the flip side a lot of pros as well. Firstly let’s identify the pros:

 

THE PROS

  • Be summer ready – by far the best pro of all is being ‘summer ready’ before everyone else. Whilst everyone else will be realising they can’t hide under big bulky clothing anymore and wanting to fit into bikinis you my friend will already be parading around in your most desired summer outfit oozing confidence and pride in what you have achieved.
  • Winter is a good training climate – winter months are actually a good climate for some forms of exercise especially long slow aerobic distance training. Yes you may be cold to start with but as soon as you start exercising you will warm up and appreciate that the climate is not adding to your heightened body temperature. Running is the perfect example, think about a time you have gone for a run (or performed a workout) in hot humid conditions… it sucked right? Now compare that to when the conditions were cooler… there’s a reason you performed better in the cooler conditions.
  • Time out – again depending on what country you live in, in Australia our holiday season being Christmas and New Year coincide with summer. We love socialising in the long warm days and as a big generalisation our social events tend to quieten down in winter and we tend to hibernate.  If your winter season is quiet then you have more time to focus on you and use that time that might otherwise be tied up in family gatherings and holiday celebrations. It can be your time to set new goals and devote time in order to achieve them

 

In our next Winter series post we will identify the cons to training during Winter and offer you a range of tips and strategies to keep you feeling motivated, on track and achieve those results.