Don’t overdo your workout intensity
When exercising in the cool yet warming temperatures of early spring, it’s best not to overdo the intensity. Excessive physical activity and sweating can weaken your immune system. If you’re then exposed to cold air without proper warmth, you can easily catch a cold or trigger various respiratory illnesses. In early spring, as all things begin to revive, so does the human body. At this time, your body needs a period of adjustment to adapt to higher levels of exertion. Suddenly increasing your workout intensity can put a significant strain on your body. For ordinary fitness enthusiasts without professional guidance, it’s easy to overlook the need to replenish the body’s energy promptly, which can affect the effectiveness of your workouts. It’s especially important to do thorough warm-up exercises before working out, ensuring that your muscles and other organs are properly warmed up to prevent injuries such as strains to muscles, ligaments, and joints due to sudden increases in activity. For example, badminton — a sport that has become very popular among young and middle-aged people in recent years — may seem like an indoor activity, but inadequate warm-up can easily lead to injuries. This is because during the cold season, the body’s organ systems are in a protective state of contraction. The elasticity and flexibility of muscles, tendons, and ligaments decrease, muscle viscosity increases, and the range of joint motion decreases. Coupled with lower air humidity, this can make you feel parched, irritable, stiff, and less limber. Starting exercise without warming up can easily lead to muscle or ligament strains and joint sprains.
Dress appropriately for exercise
When exercising in early spring, start by wearing more layers. Your clothing should be light and soft, not too tight. After warming up, you can remove some of the heavier garments. After your workout, if you’ve sweated a lot, be sure to dry off promptly and change out of sweaty clothes, shoes, and socks. Also, dress warmly with hats and additional layers to retain body heat. Additionally, when exercising outdoors in winter, it’s even more important to stay warm. After exercising, your body generates a lot of heat, and you might want to cool off, but never stand in windy areas to cool down. Instead, return to a warm indoor space as soon as possible, dry off the sweat, and change into clean clothes. As the saying goes, “Cold starts from the feet.” Since human feet are far from the heart and receive less blood supply, plus the skin on the feet is thin with poor insulation, it’s especially easy for them to get cold in outdoor winter workouts. If your head, back, or feet get cold, cold air can enter the body through pores and the respiratory tract, which not only reduces the effectiveness of your workout but may also lead to catching a cold or getting sick.
Choose a comfortable exercise environment
In winter, people tend to keep gym windows tightly closed. What they don’t realize is that a person at rest exhales more than 20 liters of carbon dioxide per hour. With more than ten people exercising simultaneously, that’s over 200 liters per hour. Add to that the byproducts of sweat and waste gases expelled by the digestive system, and indoor air can quickly become heavily polluted. In such an environment, people may experience dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and loss of appetite, naturally leading to subpar workout results. Therefore, when exercising indoors, it’s essential to maintain good air circulation and freshness. Additionally, if the weather conditions are poor — such as during heavy smog — it’s best to temporarily avoid outdoor exercise.
Pick suitable exercise activities
Due to the cold in winter, the body’s fat content increases compared to other seasons, as do weight and body measurements. While this can be beneficial for thinner individuals aiming to gain weight, it’s not ideal for developing muscle definition, tone, or strength. Therefore, winter workouts should involve greater intensity and effort, increased sets and repetitions of exercises, along with more aerobic components, extending workout duration accordingly to improve bodily function, develop specific fitness qualities, burn body fat, and prevent excessive fat accumulation. Additionally, try to keep rest intervals relatively short, especially when exercising outdoors, to avoid standing in cold air for extended periods. If the rest time is too long, your body temperature can drop, causing muscles to shift from an excited state to fatigue, increasing viscosity, and negatively affecting workout effectiveness. Starting to exercise again under these conditions can make you more prone to catching a cold and getting injured.
As for choosing how to exercise during the Spring Festival, slower-paced and lower-intensity options should be your first choice. Activities like hiking, jogging, walking, doing radio calisthenics, fitness qigong, and practicing tai chi are all good choices. Young people might also play table tennis or badminton, while basketball or soccer can be played indoors if conditions allow.