How To Maintain Your Endurance and Stamina In The Winter Season

Winter is the most cozy season where many individuals forget about working out and literally hibernate inside their bed sheets to watch Netflix and eat yummy, stuffy foods. But if looking fit and building your muscle endurance is your goal for the year, you might want to make some healthy choices by resuming activity. Winter is in fact the perfect time of the year for endurance athletes to take it easy and focus on maintaining their existing endurance with a more efficient aerobic system. But if the winter cold seems to obstruct your workout sessions outdoors, the only way you can combat that obstacle and continue maintaining endurance are by following these steps listed below.

Take It Indoors

Joining a clubhouse or a gym is beneficial in maintaining endurance with regular workouts in an indoor space where no cold weather becomes in interruption. If gym memberships are not for you, try getting a treadmill or a spin bike at home to continue maintaining endurance by doing home cardio activities. If running on a treadmill is something you don’t prefer, try other indoor gym equipment like stair climber, elliptical, bike trainer, rower, etc. In fact we recommend trying the spin bike because it’s a lower-impact workout that is easier on the joints but still helps in maintaining endurance.

Work On Your Core

For all endurance athletes and runners, building core strength is extremely important in maintaining endurance and improving stamina during the winters. An increased core strength provides higher torso stability and flexibility during running and other complex muscle activities. Ultimately, this uses less energy and provides an increased recovery from previous vigorous cardio and weights workout sessions.

Get Some Cold Weather Gear And Run Outside

Synthetic materials are preferred during cold temperatures. Everybody has different cold weather tolerance. But as an active individual, you shouldn’t stop cardio activities if maintaining endurance and improving stamina is your goal. With proper winter gear and no ice on the road, athletes should find a safe day to make it a point to not skip morning runs/jogs/brisk walks outside. Winter running is ever better than running outside in the summer heat. You sweat less and you’ll remain more hydrated during winter runs.

You’ll feel more energised. And since your heart will run slower than it does in the summer heat, you might find yourself adding an extra kilometre or two some days instead of giving up early. You build twice the stamina and endurance because your body works twice as hard than it typically would during winter running sessions. Some great athletes have this secret of running when it’s ice cold to maintain musculoskeletal strength and fitness. This even prevents them from having any serious injuries when they begin training during summer after say a long break.

Focus On Weight Loss

It’s true that endurance athletes struggle to lose weight in the middle of a training plan. The eating plan for an athlete while maintaining endurance requires constant refueling and nourishing to achieve peak performance. This is completely opposite from the eating plan of someone wanting to lose weight. Calories consumed need to be replenished. Hence, winter season is the best time to focus on weight loss eating plans before the athletes switch to an eating plan for maintaining endurance.

Focus On Improving Strength

Now that running on the treadmill has completely faulted your focus from maintaining endurance, it’s time you switch to focusing on weight training. A regular workout or cross fit training should be a part of maintaining endurance, we get that! But winters can be a good time to focus a little extra on strength and heavy weight training for improving stamina. Weight training helps in building muscle fiber. For runners and endurance athletes, winters are usually an off-season. Hence, they can switch to lifting heavier instead of running to benefit from higher stamina during their endurance races in the latter half of the year in their races. One must not neglect strength training if they wish to improve stamina. Additionally, resistance training helps with age-related muscle loss and can help in maintaining endurance in your 40s and beyond.

Indoor Pool Running/Swimming

Obviously picking a sports club membership for this one is a must, because indoor pool activity is essential. Pool running is one of the best substitutes for running on land, but you gotta be mindful and careful while transitioning back to ground running in the summers. Swimming is a challenging aerobic full body workout that provides running athletes the opportunity to push towards measurable goals like swimming one kilometre.

Transitioning Back To Normal Training

When endurance athletes are ready to start regular training, you must resume mileage and intensity of the training very gradually. You want to avoid large leaps in your endurance training. By slowly increasing the intensity of the workout, your body tends to adapt in a much safer way and minimises any injury risks to your muscle, skeleton, and overall fitness. It’s much easier to maintain fitness with a smoother transition than building it from scratch once lost with sudden training after large leaps of maintaining endurance.

For people who live an active life, you could even go on winter hikes with the right winter/snow gear. Hiking always has endurance and stamina building benefits on the body. For those you have begun their endurance maintaining journey, try adding Qraa Men’s Dynamo Power Capsules to your daily routine to help you manage, maintain, and enhance endurance and stamina pre-during-post workout sessions. These capsules are 100% vegan and Ayurvedic with no side effects.