Finding different ways to exercise during the cold winter months may be difficult but can be possible if done properly.
“Exercising during the winter can be dangerous if you don’t take the proper care of yourself,” said Jeremy Hare, adjunct professor of kinesology and weight training coach. When exercising during the winter, there are many ways of preventing injury and staying healthy during the season.
The National Strength and Conditioning Association highly recommends taking the following precautions during winter exercising.
“Over training is a common, negative response to high intensity, high frequency and/or high volume training, and can have serious psychological and biochemical effects on your body,” according to the NSCA website.
One key factor that helps the prevention of injury during winter exercising is stretching, Hare said.
“Rachel McDaniel finds her own way of staying physically active by hanging around, especially during the cold season sporting her Nike winter attire.”
“When doing winter exercising, it is necessary to properly warm up, and stretch the body before any intense workouts,” said Chris Bates athletic trainer. “When exercising in the winter, it’s pertinent to wear layers of clothing instead of thick layers because if you wear thick layers and take them off then you are more susceptible to sickness.”
Using therabands while stretching allows an individual to mimic the movement they are trying to enhance, allowing them to stretch and warm up while creating muscle memory.
Therabands are rubber bands that measure from two feet up to 4 feet and can stretch from 4 feet to 6 feet.
Kris Johnson, junior business adminiatration major and middle blocker for the Lancer’s volleyball team, said that “Coach Bates makes us warm up about five to six minutes and stretch before we do any upper-body workouts.”
Other ways to warm up and stretch are walking, jumping rope, jogging or running.
“The most common mistakes that people do after they’re done exercising is not wearing warm clothes after a workout,” Hare said.
“Not wearing warm clothes causes the person exercising to cool down too rapidly because their sweat is cooling them off too quickly which could lead to injury if they would decide to exercise again without warming up.”
While exercising is very important to one’s physical health, there are many things that can go wrong if someone does not take the proper steps to prevent an injury.
Winter exercising needs more care than any other season. Having one ounce of prevention can save four pounds of pain, Hare said.
