by Ron Robbins

Created on: March 14, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

Are cold weather teams disadvantaged for the Super Bowl? I'm not a Football player myself, but with my experience in boxing, I've had to use a bicycle in Michigan weather for the entire duration of winter some years. Physical exertion becomes considerably more difficult in a colder environment. You need to adjust your breathing and mentality to overcome the difference without becoming sore and exhausted.

The fact is, the weather may be somewhat of a disadvantage, but the teams from places where cold weather is a fact of life, also have the advantage of training in this weather. I have no real scientific basis for my opinion in this case, but perhaps I will do some research and change my blog entry here at a later time in reflection of scientific findings on the subject.

However, with all of my experience in cold weather, training for my chosen sport, it seems to be a huge advantage. You can't breathe as easily and your joints get sore more quickly. You become accustomed to these situations, where people training in constantly warm environments have practically no weather fluctuation and their versatility and performance in a climate with cold weather may be reduced significantly.

I will give an example from personal experience. We received a significant deal of snow a couple of weeks ago, and I decided I would try to bicycle through it to the boxing gym regardless of the amount of snow that had fallen. I ended up discovering the City of Lansing recently cut funding for the Bobcat machines which clear the city sidewalks, and nobody was shoveling or removing snow in accordance with the city regulation.

I ride about 4 miles, and am in excellent physical condition, but simply could not make it to the gym. I was forced to turn around about half way and return home, because I felt I would have no energy left to train with had I continued. The snow covering the sidewalk was at least 6 inches deep, but that was one of the most grueling workouts I had completed in awhile. If I were doing that every day in those conditions, I would be an virtually unstoppable source of energy during competition in more temperate climates.

The secret to being effective in cold weather is conducting your training in it, and conditioning yourself for the disadvantages that surely happen. I would say it certainly effects teams with little or no cold weather conditioning, but on home turf, cold weather is not much of a factor for the hosting team. They've been training in it. Pure and simple.

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