Exercise in the heat!

Are you struggling to exercise as the temperatures pick up?

You aren’t alone! Everything feels harder - and that’s because your resources are being pushed to help cool you as well as power your muscles. This is especially true if you are starting a new fitness routine or activity - you are trying to adapt to exercise and the heat at the same time. Be gentle with yourself and your progress.

We simply cannot push ourselves to the same speeds or intensity when we are adjusting to the heat. When we exercise in the heat, our bodies attempt to cool us by redistributing blood flow to the skin (for convective cooling!) and by starting to sweat.

This causes a “competition” between our muscles and skin for a limited amount of blood pumped by our hearts. Basically, we feel like we are working a lot harder and fatigue a lot faster even at lower workloads/paces. This is exacerbated in conditions that are humid as well as hot.

The good news is, the more we train and the more we get used to the heat, the more our bodies adapt. We get a bigger plasma volume (more blood!) and we start sweating quicker and more efficiently.

Listen to your body in this heat. Take breaks, sip lots of water throughout the day, and accept the slow-down that might be inevitable for some parts of the summer.