How to Dress for a Winter Workout
Keeping fit and healthy is an all-year-round requirement, and there is no better way to do this than to have an annual workout routine. While summer, autumn and spring weather conditions may encourage your fitness efforts for the most part of the year, you’re likely to hit a snag when winter sets in. The cold and frost, as well as the mist, can be discouraging. They make one feel like staying indoors, dampening your exercise mood for three months or more.
Health Reasons
Unlike fish, reptiles, and amphibians, the human body isn’t designed for cold environments. Working out in the cold may worsen an existing health condition or encourage the development of new ones. Your skins may also crack and lose its texture as a result of the cold and all these points toward increased medical bills. If you workout as a family, this may bring about financial setbacks worth avoiding by knowing how to dress for a winter workout.
Dress in layers
Workout experts note that physical exercise can make your internal body temperature 30 degrees warmer in comparison to its immediate surrounding temperature. Many subsequently feel that it’s fine to jog or frog jump up hill in ordinary workout cloths. This is dangerous since your inner body temperature zone is smaller compared to that of your surroundings during winter. Heat diffuses quickly from your body into the immediate environment – subjecting you to cardiovascular complications.
To avoid these, some people opt to look out for the best jumper to block the cold while exercising. Note that this is also a bad idea since it will block air circulation on the skin – resulting in too much sweating. The result is a dehydrated body that you can’t take out for a round of exercise the following day. You’re also likely to experience chronic fatigue; hence, the best way out of all these is to dress in layers.
Picking the base layer
The tricky bit about dressing up for a winter workout is striking the balance between the outside cold and the heat generated by the body as you exercise. It’s essential to stay dry during the workout because the water retained on your skin as a result of sweat can ice up and slow you down owing to hypothermia.
The workout cloth in direct contact with your body should subsequently be made of silk, wool or synthetic fabrics such as polypropylene. Polyester-blend tights and leggings allow for limb muscle and joint movements, besides keeping your legs warm and it’s possible to find loose fitting versions if you’re not into tights.
