Get winter healthy

With your training regime hopefully going well and your goals setting at full pace for the New Year you may begin to lose a little focus on the now. Training in the winter can be a harsh time for many and the colder air and the shorter daylight can affect moral, training schedules and workloads but it can be a successful time too.

With a focus on staying warm and healthy let’s take a look at how you can remain in your best shape within the cold months and the weeks ahead.

Stay warm

Training in the cold can become less of an exciting prospect for many and it’s obvious that it is a harsher time. Think warmth when your training and add layers to stay warm and loose during the heavy work in the gym. Wear technical base layers that will keep you dry of sweat and warm during your workouts.

Even when you’re just travelling to the gym you can cut your warming up period down by half just by staying warm in the outside elements before you get into your gym or class. Be sensible with clothing whilst outside, ignore the need to stay on ‘trend’ or fashionable and just think practical and to stay as warm as possible.

Vitamin influx

A lot of you should already be taking your daily vitamins as part of your regime and you should know the importance of a functional amount for your body to cope with the demands you place on it. In the colder months ahead your aim should be to influx your system with helpful items such as Vitamin C to help fight colds and also Vitamin D to help with the low hours of daylight and give you a bit of an energy boost for the late night shifts.

Try to to incorporate some natural boosts too with fresh ginger and lemon hit in the dark mornings to help you wake up and to start the day correctly. You can mix many natural ingredients together in a hot drink to stay warm throughout the day and they are a useful and more nutritionally effective alternative to your coffee and caffeine hits you may be used to.

Get loose

Given the freezing temperatures and the stiffness you’re bound to experience with the winter months it would be foolish of you to ignore the need to get loose and warm before and after your training. Incorporating stretching and cardio into your regime should be a fact of life for you already but with the ease at which you can pick up injuries with the colder weather it should be of an even higher priority now. If you’ve never been a fan of a cardio warm up or stretching them you should make an effort to get to know what stretches and what warm ups and cool downs you need to do to keep your body working at its optimum level. Take the required extra time to warm up over 15-20 minutes to get your body warm and ready for the training ahead and don’t forget the focus on an effective cool down afterwards either as it’s just as important to your training regime. Stretching is massively important to your body’s functionality with your training and should never be forgotten, especially when training in the winter. Use 10-15 minutes to really get a good stretch on and make sure that your joints and limbs are fully warmed up and ready for the load ahead.

With the above ideas and focus you can really have a good and successful training regime over the winter months ahead and come out the other side in a great position. Focus on feeling as fresh as possible after each training session and remain in the best physical shape you can by taking care of your body as best you can. You have all the tools necessary to have a great winter training schedule just make sure you go out there and do the damn thing to the best you can do!