The benefits of exercising outdoors in winter..

There are many clear benefits to exercising outdoors, whatever the season – for a start, it’s often free: a weekly bike ride, a run, even a brisk 30-minute walk is a lot cheaper than your annual gym membership!

As well as the financial benefits of exercising outdoors, there are well-documented mental health benefits too, with everybody from The Body Coach to The Woodland Trust acknowledging the positive gains to be made from outdoor exercise – though these very much centre around taking your exercise in a green space. 

A boot camp in your local park, surrounded by grass and trees, delivers more than a burst of aerobic fitness; scientific studies have shown that ‘green exercise’ can improve self-esteem and mood, as well as positively impacting anxiety and depression. As well as the release of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin (which help lift mood both short and long term) studies show that regular use of woods or parks for physical exercise reduces the risk of poor mental health, whereas no such pattern was found in non-natural settings like gyms. For those in stressful work or life situations, outdoor exercise is something you can take into your own control, and reap the benefits.

Outdoor exercise seems like a good thing in the summer month, of course, when the days are long and the temperatures mild, but in winter…well, suddenly the gym, with its weights, static bikes, treadmills and yes, even the grunting man in the corner, can feel appealing.

Exercising outdoors in winter brings extra benefits however, which make it well worth the effort.

Boost your immunity

Winter brings with it of course the increased likelihood of catching a cold, either from your children, surrounded as they are by other small germ-carriers all day at school or nursery, or in your own workplace, where air-conditioning can spread a cold faster than butter on hot toast.

However, studies have found that exercising outdoors in the cold weather can actually boost your immune system, helping you fight off colds, or reducing the impact of a cold as your body is able to combat it more rapidly. One study, undertaking in the USA by the 

Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research found that regular outdoor exercise in the cold reduced the risk of susceptibility to colds and flu by up to 30%.

This is because being outside fires up your immune system, as your body recognises it needs to work harder to ward off threats of bacterial infection. 

Plus, of course, exercising outside means you won’t be exposed to any germs brought  into the gym by other users. Win win.

Increased calorie burn

Thrillingly, there’s some evidence to suggest that being cold can burn calories. This happens for two reasons:

1. When you’re exercising in the cold, your body doesn’t have to work so hard to regulate your core temperature, which means you can exercise for longer and burn more calories as a result.
2. Conversely, as your body works harder to stay warm, it burns calories just by boosting your metabolic rate to do that. So even a daily brisk walk will do you good.
3. Cold weather training helps to turn the white fat we use for energy storage into brown fat, which stimulates our metabolism and helps burn calories. This is, we think, particularly interesting! When we are born, we arrive with a good underlayer of brown fat, which helps keep us warm. As we age, however, we lose most of our brown fat and, if we don’t maintain a healthy lifestyle replace it with white fat – which is the wibbly-wobbly fat we can actually see move on our bodies. 

Brown fat breaks down blood sugar and fat molecules to create heat and help maintain body temperature. Cold weather exercise activates the conversion of white fat to brown brown fat, which in turn burns calories, helping us achieve our fitness goals. 

Boost your heart health

Exercising in the cold forces your heart to work harder, making your cardio exercise choices, from a run to a bike ride to a boot camp, even more effective.

Boost your lung strength

If you have ever exercised in cold weather, you will know it can feel harder to breathe properly, which is apparently a good thing. A study at Arizona State University found that training in cold weather helps teach your lungs and whole body to utilise oxygen more efficiently, which helps boost your overall performance.

Beat those winter blues

Just as in summer, exercising outside in winter can have a very positive effect on our mental health. Get outside and get the blood pumping: research at Duke University in the USA found that cardio exercise markedly increases levels of serotonin in the brain, and showed cardio exercise to be  four times more effective at reducing symptoms of depression than antidepressant drugs. 

Just remember the old adage – there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. So do your research, equip yourself with the right shoes and the layers you need (and maybe a head torch), get out there and do it for you.

Eddie – 20th September 2024. (Image used from JP & Brimelow Estate Agents marketing team of Alexandra Park in Whalley Range).