Why Winter is the Best Time to Start Outdoor Fitness Training

Winter is a great time to get outside and start some outdoor fitness training because when you are cold you burn more calories trying to stay warm. Everyone knows that if you want to lose weight you need to burn some calories and winter is a great time to do it. If you are cold your body will speed up your metabolism to help keep it warm and burn more calories in doing so. The trick when you get started with this is not to be drawn into eating high fat calorie dense foods that we tend to eat in winter and to still be sensible about not training outdoors in the rain.


Imagine getting to the start of summer and not having those four to six kilograms of extra body fat to burn off to feel good about your figure. Imagine how much better your heart and circulatory system will be if each year you maintain a healthy body with a great diet all year round.

During winter many people just stop being active for both indoor and outdoor fitness training, essentially we hibernate. When you become less active your muscles atrophy (shrink) and your metabolism slows down. Unlike most animals that hibernate we don't fast for the winter, we do become inactive but we keep eating.

Our body fat is our natural insulation but with modern housing, clothing and transportation we just don't need to put on some winter weight however the natural inclination is still there. For some people they just eat because they are bored others eat to deal with emotional stress if you combine that with a natural inclination to eat high fat energy dense foods and drop your activity levels to become more sedentary then you are going to store fat.

If you train outdoors leading into winter and during winter you will acclimatise to the changing season very well. Your body will slowly get used to the temperature change and even when you get to the chilly mornings they won't seem as offensive. You will not have to wear a significant amount of extra clothing or eat a great deal of food. When most people turn up to an outdoor training session at 6am on a winters morning they mostly have a jacket on but within 10 minutes of warm up and activity I soon see the extra layers coming off. If you lived in a heated house, drive around with the heater on and work in a heated office then not only do you have a large carbon footprint but you will also find it difficult to adjust to the season as you live in an artificial environment.

If you want to get a great time on a fun run then winter is the time to do it. It is so much easier in winter to lose the heat that our metabolic systems produce during a run, and without the extra heat stress you can push your cardiovascular system harder and get that little bit of extra speed. By training at a higher level over winter you will get more significant improvements in your cardiovascular system and local muscular endurance physically and you will develop a greater mental discipline.

If you are doing your outdoor fitness training by the ocean or up in the mountains, you are still going to get all the benefits of training outdoors and acclimatising. To start your outdoor fitness training visit

http://www.outdoorfitnesstrainingmanly.com.au

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_R_Berry