A Nice Winter Run

People always put on weight during the colder winter months because "they can't get outside as much." Personally, I think that is a pretty poor excuse. People work and exercise outside in the winter all the time. Some say it is uncomfortable. Good intense exercise is supposed to be uncomfortable anyway. If you dress for it, exercising in a cold climate can be very comfortable. Just ask all the people who run, bike, snowshoe, and cross-country ski all winter long. We have even had some EPT sessions outside. One was in the middle of a blizzard last February! Great workout!

Anyway, running outdoors in the winter is great exercise and it offers great benefits just because of the colder climate. Calorie burn goes up so you can stay warm which is great for anyone trying to keep their weight down. I really like winter running because of how it stresses agility because of the unpredictability of the surfaces. Running on nice, dry roads and paths during non-winter months is much easier. Unless you are going cross-country, most running paths are usually smooth and hard and you can get a good grip with each step. That is the way we normally run which our bodies have become accustomed. Most muscle action is in a front-to-back sagittal plane with very little stabilization needed side-to-side. Abs are not stressed much. Hip, knee, and ankle flexion remain generally consistent. It is easy to keep your balance because the running surface doesn't change and has a high friction co-efficient.

All that goes out the window running in the winter. You have to carefully choose where each step goes which means you may have to step offline or take a longer or shorter stride. This slows you down a little but it increases your body awareness and eye-foot coodination which enhances your agility. Maybe you hit a slick patch. Then your brain has to react to the change in ground reactive forces on the slippery surface or, in everyday turns, you gotta keep from going down hard on your keester. This forces you to pull in all your stabilizing muscles throughout your body to keep your self upright and moving. You can see that the risk to life and limb increases but all this added coordination, agility, and stabilization makes this an ideal training methodology for sport-specific or life-specific training.

I was first introduced to winter running was during my assignment to the 10th Mountain Division in northern New York State. We had to run all the time in the winter and it was quite a challenge trying to stay in formation while we all slipped, slid, and bumped into one another. Sometimes someone would go down in front of you and take out a half-dozen others and you had to jump out of the way of the writhing pile while not taking anyone else out. From a safety aspect, it was not good and injuries did go up. From a physical training point-of-view, it was great! You could not replicate that environment or conditioning anywhere.

Many people aren't training this way because they don't understand the benefits. Most people will choose the easy route and wait until spring to go running or they will opt for a treadmill or indoor running track. My opinion is that training outside in nature is the best way....regardless of the time of year or the weather.