by Michelle Wilkinson

Created on: November 10, 2009

If you're the kind of person who really enjoys being active, a cold winter can sometimes make continuing with your exercise routine more difficult, especially if you happen to train outdoors most of the time. With a cold winter comes frost, ice, snow, hail, mist, wind and rain, early nights and gloomy days. It can be hard to motivate yourself to leave the house when it is warm and cosy indoors and freezing outside, but you know that if you want to retain a certain level of fitness you have to make the effort, as you don't want to have to start right from the beginning when spring finally rolls around.

If you're going to continue training outside, therefore, it is a sensible idea to have all the appropriate clothing you need to prevent you from freezing to death! If you decide to go for a run in only your shorts and t-shirt when it is snowing outside you will feel terrible, as your body will be doing all it can to stay warm, and you will find it a real challenge to run your usual route, making you feel even less inclined to get up the next morning to go for a run.

You need to buy clothes that keep you warm and which take sweat away from the skin, so that you when you run (or walk, or cycle) the cold is tolerable. You also have to think about your safety, since it gets darker earlier and you may not be as visible to passing motorists. Wearing a high visibility jacket and perhaps attaching some lights to the back should alert car drivers to your presence.

In the midst of winter you are likely to encounter days when it is impossible to follow your usual exercise routine, but that doesn't mean you can't exercise at all. It does, however, mean bringing being more flexible and bringing your workout indoors. If you enjoy cycling you might want to consider investing in a turbo trainer, while if running is more your thing you could always purchase a treadmill.

However, there are less expensive pieces of equipment if your main concern is simply staying reasonably fit over winter before being able to get back into a more intensive training schedule when the weather begins to improve. There are lots of steppers, trampolines, jump ropes and exercise DVDs to choose from; or you could avoid spending any money and simply choose to run up and down your own stairs!

A cold winter therefore doesn't have to spell the end of your exercise routine, though you may have to adapt it to accommodate the ever-changing weather.

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