It’s the time of year when people want to stay indoors and roast chestnuts by an open fire. We indulge in hot chocolate or Toblerone bars, and we say it’s alright to take it easy until summertime, when we work on our beach bods.
I suggest that you take advantage of the weather and snow this winter. There are so many opportunities for an outdoor workout that will rev your metabolism faster than they would in the summer or spring.
The obvious ones are winter sports like skiing and snowboarding. Those sports are excellent for core development and balance, and work your legs as well. But a less common activity is snowshoeing. When you’re wearing all your snow gear, you’re carrying a lot of extra weight. And because your temperature will be up substantially when you start moving, your metabolism will be revved up quite a bit.
Some other winter activities that you might dismiss at first, but are actually good workouts, are shovelling the driveway, building a snow fort, or even sledding. As long as you keep moving and you’re supplying some resistance to your body, you’ll be getting exercise. And if you’re climbing back up a hill and carrying a sled with you, you’ll be pretty tired by the end.
Of course, it’s important to keep getting some pure exercise in too. Make a resolution to hit the gym a few times a week, or do laps at the pool or climb the UNB rock climbing wall. The important thing is to get at least 30 minutes of moderate to strenuous activity every day. For those of you who hate the snow (suck it up, it’s Canada), the gym or an indoor sport is probably the best way to stay motivated. You can even get a P90X DVD if you really don’t want to leave the house.
One tip for those who really don’t want to hit the gym over winter, but drag themselves there anyway: Do supersets. Supersets allow you to complete your workout in half the time, so you can either leave early, or work even more muscles. It also keeps your heart pumping because of shorter rest periods, so it’s almost like a cardio session.
A superset is when you have two exercises, and instead of doing three sets of one and resting between each set, your rest period for one muscle group is used for exercising a different muscle group. It’s best to do this with opposing muscle groups, like triceps and biceps, chest and back, etc. Because one group isn’t doing the heavy work, it gets to rest while the other group does. You might have to rest between each pair of sets, but don’t rest for long. It simulates interval training and is great for your body.
A similar type of exercise is circuit training. The difference is that when circuit training, you do one set of every exercise in your routine before resting. So you could have a group of five exercises. You go through one set at each station without stopping, and then rest for two minutes. That’s one set. You do the whole thing three or four times, and you will feel like you had an amazing cardio session, with a lot of the benefits of weight training. This only has to take 15 minutes to half an hour.
Let’s hope I see a lot of you out on the slopes or in the gym! Healthy Holidays!
Alex Vietinghoff is a certified ski instructor, works at the J.B. O’Keefe Fitness Centre and is currently studying to be a personal trainer through Fitness NB. He is also vice-president student life of the St. Thomas University students’ union.
