Cold Weather Workouts

With the first fluffy snow last evening, we can officially say that the winter weather might be on the way. Fall basically happened overnight with a flashback to summer temperatures and tornadoes. Weird weather.

With the inconsistency of the weather, my workout schedule has taken a hit. I don’t like to run by myself in the morning when it’s dark, so I have gone to my winter workout rotations.

Disclaimer: Helen is super busy, so I am lucky to get three workouts in a week that might be small. In my mind it’s better than nothing.  

Yoga

When I marched with Blue Stars Drum and Bugle Corps, we only had a certain amount of time to warm our bodies up with stretching before we hit the day running. I learned that yoga is awesome. I miss having a trainer to guide me through the flow, but to stretch and get some cardio in I use YouTube tutorials or just the routines I remember from marching. A good workout for me in yoga is about 150 calories for a 30 minute session. That session is always followed with my favorite yoga pose, savasana.

Treadmill Runs

Let me start by saying, I hate treadmills. I would rather run outside in the freezing cold than do a 5K on a treadmill. However, when I need to keep running I will run on a treadmill. My joints hurt so bad after a treadmill run, so I will go short distances on the treadmill and stretch before the next mile or alternate from elliptical to treadmill. If I really can’t run, I will put netflix on my iPad and prop it on the elliptical and go for an episode of MadMen.

Ping Pong

My brother and I would play tennis at least three times a week when it was still warm out. If other people were playing, we would take turns playing WallE. We made up that name for volleying the tennis ball against the wall. Because it’s cold and rainy, we go to WOW and play ping pong. Even for a short game, we can burn a ton of calories like we would when we play tennis. We have resulted in bringing our own ping pong balls, because the one’s they provide usually are smooshed.

Stairs

My Apple Watch will tell me if I was successful at hitting my move goal at the end of the day. Lately I haven’t hit my goal. I haven’t been making my goal because my priorities are assignments and projects. It’s sad to me, when my health isn’t a priority. When I am stuck at the library late and I only have a hundred calories left to meet my goal, I will be “that guy” and climb up and down the stairs to meet my goal. It sounds so silly, but even the five minutes it takes to do a stair workout is something that makes me feel a little bit better about taking care of myself.

These are only four things that I do to try to stay active when it gets cold. On the meal plan, it gets tough to try to eat healthy so I at least can be in control of staying active.

What do you do to stay fit once it gets cold?