By: Heidi Harris, RD-N, LD-N, CD-N
We all know what it’s like to run outside during the cold winter. It’s never easy dealing with that cold winter chill hitting your lungs. Not to mention, getting the motivation to don your oh-so-stylish headlamp and go an after-work run when it’s so dark outside it feels like midnight can be an obstacle!
As athletes, we also know how important it is to vary our workouts. That’s why changing up your workout during the winter months is just as critical to bringing back the excitement and liveliness to your cold-season training routine. Let’s talk about strategies to do just that!
Importance of Changing Up Your Workouts
When planning your exercise training routine, it’s important to consider exercise variation. Exercise variation helps prevent boredom in your training routine, motivates and keeps you accountable, and ultimately helps maximize your training results.
Exercise variety also helps dampen the potential for adaptive resistance. Adaptive resistance occurs when an athlete has done the same exercise for an extended period of time, and ultimately, your body no longer responds to it.1
Adaptive resistance also contributes to increased muscle and tissue wear and tear, potentially promoting an injury risk factor. By creating varying exercise routines, an athlete will make new stimuli that create more progress over time and may decrease the risk of injury from overuse.1
Four Types of Exercises to Include in Your Workouts
It’s common to fall victim to the pitfalls of continuing to practice the same type of physical activity repeatedly. This could be for various reasons, like trying to achieve your personal best, familiarity and comfort, and maybe even a potential knowledge deficit of trying new exercise styles. Varying your exercise can be motivational and stimulating, especially during winter.
Here are four types of exercises to consider when planning your training:
Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise is any activity that uses large muscle groups and can be maintained continuously while relying on oxygen to create ATP (adenosine triphosphate) or energy. Aerobic exercise includes jogging, running, cycling, swimming, hiking and dancing.2,3
If you’re looking for energy support, our Klean B Complex contains a complete Vitamin B Complex. B vitamins are involved in nearly all physiological systems in the body, including energy production. Why? Because vitamin Bs are essential to mitochondrial function and are coenzymes for energy production.4‡
So, if you’re the type of athlete who focuses a lot on aerobic activity, the colder months are a great trial time to vary up your workout with the next upcoming three exercise types:‡
Strength Training
Strength training is another exercise that usually dives into the anaerobic phase of generating energy. This is another way the body can create energy without oxygen.3
Strength training is important because as we age, we start to lose our muscle mass and this is a way you can help build it back. Strength training not only makes you a stronger athlete, but it also helps stimulate bone growth, assist in glucose metabolism, assist with healthy weight management, improve balance and posture, and manage joint stress.2
Magnesium is a good nutrient to consider when adding strength training to your exercise program. We’ve all felt that muscle burn after a good strength-training session. Magnesium is essential in supporting an athlete’s ability to produce and utilize ATP and contract and relax muscles to ultimately improve recovery time between workouts.5‡
Stretching
Incorporating stretching as part of your exercise regime is also important to any diverse exercise regime. Stretching improves an athlete’s flexibility in their muscles and tendons. When repeating the same exercise repeatedly, muscles shorten and don’t function properly. This may increase the potential for muscle cramps, strains, joint discomfort and difficulty maintaining balance.2
Routinely stretching your muscles helps make them longer and more flexible for an increased range of motion. Research supports stretching as part of a dynamic warm-up to help promote athletic performance.6,7
While stretching helps improve flexibility in an athlete’s muscles and tendons, omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil also help support an athlete’s joint health. Our Klean Omega provides 1,250mg of essential fish oil, including 500mg of EPA and 250mg of DHA.‡
Balance and Isometric Training
Stay tuned for my blog on balance and isometric training. Balance training is a type of exercise that improves balance, stability and proprioception, or body awareness. It promotes an athlete’s agility and ability to overcome obstacles by strengthening core muscles and ankle strength.8
During the unmotivating bitter cold of the winter months, it can be really easy to feel as though you’ve hit a plateau and aren’t making the gains you once were, so it may benefit you to include balance training in your next workout. Why? Because balance training allows an athlete to practice controlling their center of gravity to improve posture, strength, dynamic trunk control and even strengthen their controlled fall ability.9
If you’ve favored one exercise style over the other, like aerobic versus strength training or strength training versus balance and isometric training, challenge yourself this winter to add something new to your routine. It may be just what you need to improve your overall athletic performance and inspire your latest fitness goals.
Improve Performance, Add Variety
Mixing up your workouts is one of the best ways to prevent boredom, adaptive resistance, muscle fatigue and overuse. Plus, it’s a great way to stay in shape and meet your peak performance during the winter months. Looking for clean, NSF certified for Sport reliable products to support your training goals? Check out our Klean Athlete products specifically designed for the athlete in you!‡
Citations:
- Magat, B. (2020, August 25). The Importance of Variety in Exercise Programs. www.uhhospitals.org. https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2020/08/the-importance-of-variety-in-creating-your-exercise-program
- Harvard Health Publishing. (2017, January 13). The 4 most important types of exercise - Harvard Health. Harvard Health; Harvard Health. https://www.health.harvard.edu/exercise-and-fitness/the-4-most-important-types-of-exercise
- Patel, H., et al. (2017). Aerobic vs anaerobic exercise training effects the cardiovascular system. World Journal of Cardiology, 9(2), 134. https://doi.org/10.4330/wjc.v9.i2.134
- Institute of Medicine. Dietary Reference Intakes for Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Biotin and Choline. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 1998.
- Nielsen FH, Lukaski HC. Magnes Res. 2006;19(3):180–9.
- Torres, E. M., et al. (2008). Effects of Stretching on Upper-Body Muscular Performance. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 22(4), 1279–1285. https://doi.org/10.1519/jsc.0b013e31816eb501
- Gremion, G. (2005). [Is stretching for sports performance still useful? A review of the literature]. Revue Medicale Suisse, 1(28), 1830–1834. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16130528/
- Balance training. (n.d.). TheFreeDictionary.com. https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/balance+training
- Balance Training. (n.d.). Physiopedia. https://www.physio-pedia.com/Balance_Training
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