Tips For Training In the Cold

If you live in the Midwest then you no doubt felt Autumn's last gasp this past weekend.  The temperature dropped almost forty degrees in the course of about twelve hours on Sunday.  This is nothing new this time of year in this part of the country.

I trained on Saturday afternoon and was bare chested by the end of my session.  By Monday I was in multiple layers.  If you are one of the few trainees that must train in an unheated space here are some tips to ensure your training sessions are not negatively affected by the weather.

Leave The Tough Guy Ego At The Door

Dress for the occasion.  You want to wear enough to stay warm, but not so much that your movement is restricted.  I trained bench tonight and I had two pairs of socks, flannel pajama pants, sweat pants, Under Armor Cold Gear turtleneck, thermal shirt, hooded sweatshirt, winter hat, and gloves.  This is the only time you'll see me wear gloves to train.  The feel of the bar in your hands is way different and a bit unnatural.  I'd rather use my bare hands, but a frozen bar leads to frozen hands and that would make the bar feel even worse.

Drink Coffee Before You Train

Coffee is a great pre-workout drink.  Very inexpensive and gives you the same results as the high priced bullshit that supplement companies shill.  The caffeine not only gives you a mental perk, it also ramps up your metabolism which raises your body heat.  The caffeine also increases your pain tolerance which can be useful when training in less than ideal environments.

Take Extra Time To Warm Up

This should go without saying.  I did my normal warm up for when I do upper body work but I intermittently threw in some jump roping.  Nothing crazy, just 50-100 skips here and there until I had done about 500 total.

I also took more warm up reps when getting ready to bench.  Here are my normal warm up weights:

Barx20
95x10
135x5
185x4
205x3
235x2
255x1

Monday it went:

Barx20x2
95x10x2
135x5x2
185x4
205x3
235x2
255x1

Again, it's nothing crazy; just a little extra movement before the heavier weights to get the blood flowing.

Use Short Rest Periods

I usually keep my rest shorter anyways but today it had a little more meaning.  Using shorter rest periods ensures that your body never gets too cold and stiff.  Another way to stay warm between sets is to do some active recovery like stretching or rolling out the muscle groups you're not using.  Between sets of bench stretch your hip flexors and roll your adductors.  Between sets of squats stretch your pecs and lats.  

Don't Take Off Clothes As You Get Warm

As you start to get warm this is going to be a common temptation but one that you should resist.  Chances are you'll be sweating and taking off your top layers is going to expose the moisture to the cold.  Bad idea.  You'll probably become cold again within a few minutes.  Keep the sweatshirt on and keep the warmth in.  This is doubly true if you decide to wear a hood or a hat.  Keep it on and keep the sweat away from the cold.

Keep Your Reps In The Medium To High Range

This is a two fold good idea.  On the one hand higher reps means more movement which will create more heat to help keep you warm.  And on the other using medium to higher reps prevents you from going too heavy on lifts that are notorious for injuring lifters that don't take the time to properly warm up.  If you are going to go heavy be sure the heed the above tips or risk an avoidable injury.

QBAB (Quit Being A Baby)

Training with a purpose requires a certain degree of mental toughness to achieve anything meaningful.  If you are unwilling to give it a go unless conditions are perfect you won't get a whole lot done.  Anyone can train when the conditions are ideal, but the ones that are going to last are the ones that train when they are tired, when it's cold, or when they'd rather be going out or sitting on the couch.  To quote Alex Karras,

"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles."