How Bad Weather Can Affect Your Workout And What You Can Do

How Bad Weather Can Affect Your Workout And What You Can Do

Even if you are not outdoors much, the weather can still have a significant impact on your life. The same is true for your fitness routine: bad weather can affect your workout along with your progress too.

The Weather Can Affect Your Workout

Here are some ways that bad weather can affect your workout regardless of whether you prefer to work out outdoors or at the gym.

1⃣ Low Mood

Rain, cold, or snow can be a great motivator to skip the gym in favor of the couch and hot cocoa.

Low sunlight levels during the colder season may also cause you to feel down and excessively tired- what many call the “winter blues”.

The good news is that if you can get over the slump; working out will boost your natural endorphins and make you feel better.

2⃣ Bad Traffic

Bad weather can cause some serious traffic jams which will cut into your workout schedule. If you go to the gym, you can hit traffic getting there, or back home.

Even if you prefer to skip the gym and work out at home, your pre-work or post-work commute will cut into your routine. To avoid losing precious time, check the weather beforehand using the weather radar widget on your weather app.

If something particularly bad is coming, you can be forewarned with the storm radar function so that you can reschedule your workout and spend your time doing other things besides sitting in traffic.

3⃣ Warm-up And Cool Down

Whether you work out at home, outdoors, or at the gym, you will need more, or less, time to warm up and cool off depending on the outdoor temperature.

Properly warming up and cooling down can prevent dangerous injuries. If your weather radar tells you that the temperature is going to drop, make sure to give yourself extra time to get your muscles into workout mode.

4⃣ Higher Heart Rate

Working out in a hot environment, even for a short period of time, will make your heart work harder.

That’s because the heart directs more blood flow towards the skin, to cool the body down. And to supply the rest of the body with blood, the heart needs to increase the rate and pump faster.

5⃣ Stronger Heart

If your heart is healthy, chances are you will end up with a stronger heart if you’re working out on a cold weather.

That’s because your arteries grow tighter on cold weather, and the heart needs to do some extra work to pump the blood. And since the heart is a muscle, it strengthens with every extra contraction.

6⃣ Increased Soreness

Muscles lose more heat on a chilly weather, contract harder and become more sore than usual.

Here’s how your warm-up session should look like on a cold weather, to relax the muscles and prevent muscle soreness:

  • 10 minutes when there are 35 – 45 ℉ (or 0 -> 10 ℃) outside;
  • 15 minutes when there are 25 – 35 ℉ (or -5 -> 0 ℃) outside;
  • 20 minutes when there are 15 – 25 ℉ (or -10 -> -5 ℃) outside.

Working out is important to your health. Now that you know how bad weather can affect your workout, make sure to be prepared so you don’t let it effect your progress and cause you injuries.

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Kneller Fernandes
Kneller Fernandes
7 years ago

Nice Info