Many people who love our Toronto winters have fantastical visions of their winter workouts to include tobogganing, downhill skiing and snowboarding at Mount St. Louis Moonstone, cross-country skiing at Albion Hills Conservation Park as soon the first snowflake of the winter season falls. For some people (not me!), winter in Ontario is its own unique subset of active, healthy, outdoor fun.
For others, winter is harder. Particularly for those of us who do not, for whatever reason, partake in winter active life, it is a time that can be bitterly cold, isolating and difficult – particularly when it comes to keeping consistent with winter workouts.
I remember when I started working out in high school, the gym quickly became a meaningful destination for me as well as a source of mood-boosting during tough times. My health, physique and fitness became a focus for me.
In a city like Toronto that has such harsh winters, that focus and sense of purpose made it easier to make it through the cold.
I have found with my clients and members of my Toronto gym that the ones that have focused, healthy exercise processes tend to keep their health in check through the winter months.
I wrote this blog to create a framework for people like me, frankly, who are not winter sports enthusiasts and for whom remaining fit, healthy and active throughout the year is a top priority. Physical health is important 365 days per year, and we ought not let a little cold, snow and ice derail us from such a high priority.
And, let’s be honest here: whatever our reasons, we have chosen to live in Toronto! It doesn’t help anyone (especially you) or really make sense to act upset or surprised at the difficulties that winter presents.
By using these three simple strategies for how to stay consistent with your workouts during the winter months, you can get ahead of the cold and enable yourself to feel, function, look and live your best year-round.
Tip 1: Make your winter workouts as accessible as possible
One of the main reasons people tend to fall off from winter workouts is ease of access. Snow, ice, cold winds and freezing temperatures tend to hamper many outdoor activities and make travel to the gym much harder and less pleasant. Creating easier access to your winter workouts might cause you to have to change some things about your exercise and overall routine, but the payoff is worth it!
If you tend to walk or bicycle places, do what you can to drive / driveshare or take public transit to your workout destinations. If you are a gym person and your Toronto gym is far from you, consider joining a closer gym for the winter months. Even 5-10 minutes closer to home can make a big difference. The best gyms in Toronto will have month-to-month membership options so you can even do a temporary change of gym home to keep your workout habits intact.
If you happen to be near the Yonge and Davisville area in Toronto and want to keep your options flexible for your winter workouts, we pride ourselves at Striation 6 on having month-to-month memberships as an evergreen gym memberships. We even offer a two-week free trial to ensure that we are a good fit for you, and you for us.
Staying consistent with your winter workouts is much easier than it may seem once accessibility issues around winter weather are solved!
Tip 2: Add a bit of strategy to your winter workouts
If you have successfully used a “just do it” approach to getting yourself up off of the couch and into regular exercise, that is awesome. At a certain point, though, “just do it” just doesn’t cut it anymore when it comes to exercise, and a more strategic approach to exercise has significant advantages.
I find this particularly true when it comes to staying consistent with winter workouts. For example, if you have taken to running as your main form of exercise but find it difficult to stay consistent with it in the winter months, then that is a great time to work on other aspects of your fitness. Consistency in winter workouts in Toronto can be more easily found in strength training, mobility work and exercise focused on rehabilitating injuries, pain and imbalances that are holding you back from your best performance.
The best part of this approach to your winter workout routine is that you do not have to stop your preferred form of exercise entirely. This is a chance to strategically scale it back and work on other aspects of your strength, mobility and body confidence so that you can hit the ground running (literally, if the above example applies to you, perhaps on the Martin Goodman Trail?) better than ever when the winter weather subsides.
Tip 3: Choose better exercise routines & types so you enjoy it more!
If you find your experience of workouts to be less than pleasant, maybe it’s time to switch it up. For many people, staying consistent with winter workouts is hard enough with ice, snow and cold to deal with. If the exercise you do isn’t a great fit on top of that (“bad” exercise”), consistency is going to be harder than ever.
Let me qualify what I mean when I say bad exercise. In my opinion, for exercise to be good, it should be, in no particular order, enjoyable, effective and appropriately effortful. (It is worthwhile to note that, in my experience, enjoyment with exercise tends to follow when it is both effective and appropriately effortful)
Therefore, bad exercise would be not at all enjoyable, ineffective, and either too hard or too easy. I am a strong believer that good exercise as defined above is available to everyone, especially with the right guidance of a Toronto personal trainer.
If you are having difficulty staying consistent with your winter workouts, it could be because they are just not that enjoyable, effective or appropriate for you. Making adjustments to fulfill those requirements is likely to help you stay consistent with your exercise throughout the year, and especially during the winter months.
How to win in Toronto winters & emerge each spring feeling fantastic!
Staying consistent in your winter workouts in the Ontario climate is much easier if they are:
- Easily accessible
- Designed to support your wellness & fitness goals.
- Enjoyable, effective and appropriate for your body & needs.
Employing these tips and staying consistent might have you feeling your fittest ever in our beautiful Toronto springtime. In any case, I hope these tips are helpful and help you use the winter months to thrive in your exercise and help you feel, function, look and live your best! Book your free 2 week gym trial today to join us at Striation 6 and rediscover how great winter workouts can be.
Diamond-Level Toronto Personal Trainer & Co-Founder of Striation6
I help people experiencing pain and who might confused or concerned about how to exercise in safe, effective manner using Muscle System Work and providing customized, fun and effortful exercise that makes bad stuff in your body feel better and the good stuff feel great.
As the founder of Striation 6 and an Exercise Professional with more than 20 years of experience, it is important to me that I set the example of our Mission: to help as many people as possible feel, function, look and live better through exercise.