What to Wear for Winter & Cold Weather Workouts - Coach Tip Tuesday

The skies are cloudy.  It might snow.  The wind is picking up.  The thermometer in your car is reading 35ºF, but each of the three weather apps you’ve consulted is swearing that the “real feel” is somewhere between 15-28ºF.

You put on thermal leggings, wool socks, an underlayer, a midlayer, a jacket, a balaclava, a hat, and mittens, and head out for your run.  Within 20 minutes, you’re feeling so hot that you could swear that it’s July, not December.  You peel off your jacket and your balaclava, stuff the balaclava into your jacket pocket, and tie your jacket around your waist.  You run the rest of your workout with your jacket flapping around your legs, annoying you every step of the way.

Does this sound even a little bit familiar?  If you’re like most endurance athletes, you have had this experience at least once.  Improperly dressing for Winter and cold weather workouts is extremely common.  Athletes fret about what to wear at this time of year, and many times, they overdress, which causes its own set of issues.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way.  Dressing for Winter and cold weather workouts isn’t as complicated as we might envision it.  With a pragmatic approach, some experience, and a little bit of trial and error, every endurance athlete can choose the appropriate gear to wear for their Winter workouts.

Why are Winter Workouts Important?

While summer and the main racing season may seem very far away now, the reality is this: What you do now impacts what you will be able to do later.  Training and completing workouts during the Winter season is important and helps you be able to reach the goals you are seeking in the season to come.

Despite these truths, Winter is a season when many people choose not to exercise.  58% of people become less active during the Winter season, and while endurance athletes are generally more active than the average population, they are not immune to this decrease in activity.  Reducing activity is problematic for several reasons.

Perhaps most importantly for our lives as humans, a decrease in exercise can (and often does) contribute to poor mental health outcomes such as anxiety, sadness, depression, and irritability.  Combined with a loss of daylight, spending less time outside, and a reduced exposure to sunlight, a reduction in movement and exercise leads to many people experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder (more commonly referred to as SAD), a type of depression that happens during the Fall and Winter.  Unfortunately, this becomes a bit of “which came first - the chicken or the egg?” scenario.  The season itself can make us feel depressed, which makes us feel unmotivated and uninspired to complete workouts.  Or, we stop exercising, which makes us feel depressed.  Either of these situations results in the same thing: a reduction in movement and a decrease in exercise.

There is good news.  Engaging in a movement or exercise practice is the most impactful and significant behavioral intervention someone can do to help both their mental and their physical health.  By staying active through the Winter season, you can improve your mental and physical health while also helping set yourself up for success when it comes to reaching any and all goals you set in the season to come. 

From a training standpoint, significantly reducing or eliminating workouts is problematic because doing so represents a departure from the consistency that is necessary to see compounded and sustained gains over time.  Maintaining consistency is one of the three most significant things endurance athletes can do to help their training and performance.  It’s as simple and as hard as this: Without consistency, no endurance sports gains are possible.

I’ve seen this play out many times over for the athletes who I coach.  The athletes who don’t train over the Winter (or who train much less over the Winter than they do during the main season) end up setting themselves too far back when it comes to training adaptations.  As a result, they spend the majority (if not all) of the subsequent season attempting to regain enough fitness to attempt to get back close to where they were at the end of the previous season.  In some cases, they don’t recover that fitness, and they end up with sustained decreases in fitness over time.  

The reason for this is simple, even if it’s hard to hear: We all lose strength and fitness every year once we reach the age of 35, and we lose it at the rate of about 1% per year.  By consistently doing workouts and exercising, we can slow the rate of that loss by 90% to 0.1% per year, but if we don’t remain consistent, those losses are compounded over time.  Practically speaking (and very heartbreakingly), what this looks like is this: The athletes who I coach who don’t remain consistently active over the Winter have a much higher probability of not reaching the goals they set for themselves in the season and seasons that follow.  The athletes who I coach who do consistently do workouts over the Winter have a much higher success rate when it comes to goal achievement in the following season and seasons.

Athletes who are older than 35 and who have been active since before they were 35 may remember that they could get away with inconsistency prior to when they reached that age.  And since our minds often don’t age at the same rate that our bodies do, we like to imagine that what was once true will always be true, and that we will always get away with doing workouts when we want and not doing them when we don’t necessarily want to.  But unfortunately, this is not the case.  Consistency and not taking breaks from a movement practice or exercise becomes increasingly important each year that we live.

Winter Shows Us That We’re Too Comfortable

Maintaining a consistent exercise practice over the Winter is also important because it is one of the ways we can introduce discomfort into our training.  Many, many athletes fear The Discomfort Dragon.  Winter is a season that is uncomfortable for many athletes because of the conditions and because they don’t have imminent goals.  In a world that is increasingly comfortable, it’s important to embrace opportunities to intentionally introduce discomfort so we can be more resilient and stronger over time.

Winter being an uncomfortable season that people shy away from going out and experiencing first-hand is a very recent phenomenon when you look at the history and evolution of the human species.  As recently as 120-ish years ago, people spent a majority of their time outside, working, living, and traveling outdoors year-round, regardless of conditions.  (Not coincidentally at all, this timing is the same as when “exercise” as we currently understand it became a thing.)  Our current notion that you stay indoors and don’t go out when it’s a little cold outside or when it is snowing is a very, very recent one, and it’s one that our relatively recent ancestors would honestly probably laugh at.

Our present-day temperature comfort zones are extremely narrow, which is thanks to the climate control that exists in every indoor space we occupy.  Whether it’s your home, office, the grocery store, the mall, or your car, we can control the temperature and ambient humidity, ensuring that we perpetually exist in 74ºF conditions.  Combined with the fact that we spend less than an average of 7% of our time outdoors year-round (which, as an average, means that a majority of that percentage comes from being outdoors when it’s “nice out”), we now have an extremely difficult time tolerating the cold.  Our ancestors were much, much more hardy than we currently are.

Because our tolerance for the cold has decreased so rapidly, we shy away from going out in it.  Make no mistake: This is a choice that we’re making, no matter how much we may justify it or rationalize it in our minds.  Part of our hesitation to go outside when it’s cold is our dislike and - if we’re being honest - our fear of being even a little bit uncomfortable.  But another reason is that because we have lost our hardiness and tolerance for colder conditions, we have also lost our ability to accurately determine proper gear and clothing choices for such conditions.  Improperly dressing for these conditions can be uncomfortable at its best (such as in the example I opened this article with), or dangerous at its worst (where underdressing can lead us to sustain frostbite or hypothermia).

What is the Proper Gear and Clothing for Winter & Cold Weather Workouts?

I live and work in Syracuse, New York.  Due to our proximity to and our location east of the Great Lakes, our average annual snowfall totals around 125 inches and we receive less than one-third of the sunlight possible during the Winter season.  (For comparison’s purposes, cities at the same latitude west of the Great Lakes receive more than double the sunshine we do during the Winter months.)  After more than 15 years of being an endurance athlete and coach here, I have learned how valuable staying active through the Winter season is for mental and physical health.  I have also learned how to dress appropriately for these conditions so that I can stay active through this season.

Tip #1 - Stay Dry

My number one tip for exercising in the Winter and cold weather is to stay dry.  Think of it this way: If you wore shorts and a t-shirt outside when it was 50ºF, you’d be fine, albeit perhaps shivering a bit after a sustained amount of time in those temperatures.  But if you went into water that was that same temperature wearing those same garments, you’d feel the cold much more quickly, and you’d be at risk of hypothermia much more quickly. 

This is because water has a much greater thermal capacity than air does.  Water’s convective heat transfer is 70 times greater than air’s.  Water is an extremely effective heat sink; it will pull heat away from a heat source (such as your body) and it will transfer that heat away from its source.  As a result, staying dry is critical in cold conditions; you need to reduce the amount of water that is taking heat away from your body.  For the opposite reason, staying hydrated and sweating is so key in warm weather workouts; taking heat away from the body via that heat sink is desired when it’s hot and you need to keep your body from overheating.

Tip #2 - Wear Moisture-Wicking Fabrics (Aka NOT Cotton)

In the interests of staying dry, choosing gear items that are made from moisture-wicking fabrics is essential.  Wool and other synthetic fibers are moisture-wicking; cotton is not.  Cotton is 100% hydrophilic, which means that it absorbs water.  If you wear cotton when you are exercising in the Winter, it will absorb water and then keep that water next to you (versus evaporating), which means that that water will act as a heat sink, pulling heat away from you.

Wool and synthetic fibers, on the other hand, wick moisture away from the body, which means that the water evaporates faster, which in turn means that you stay drier and thus warmer.  I’ve found that synthetic fibers tend to work slightly better than wool when it comes to Winter gear, and they also have the advantage of being slightly less expensive than wool.  Wool does tend to be warmer and it doesn’t retain odors as much, but I’ve found that it doesn’t last as long and that it doesn’t wick moisture as effectively as its synthetic counterparts.  Despite the fact that they do tend to retain odors a bit more, I generally choose gear items made from synthetic fabrics.

When I say that all gear used in the Winter should be either synthetic or wool, I mean it.  (And quite frankly, it’s also better to have moisture-wicking fabrics for all gear year-round, but it’s most important in the Winter.)  Everything from your socks, bottoms, tops, head gear, hand gear, undergarments, and footwear should be made of wool or synthetic materials.  Nothing should be cotton.

Tip #3 - Use Layers

Despite my villainization of layers in the opening example of this article, wearing layers can be really useful in the Winter.  Having the option to remove (and then, if necessary, add back) garments is useful for long workouts and/or changing conditions over the course of a workout.

I’ve learned that most people will do fine in Winter workouts if their core is sufficiently warm.  As a result, this is the part of the body that should get attention when it comes to layering.  Wearing a moisture-wicking base layer and then adding a mid-layer (such as a thermal shirt) and outer layer (such as a jacket) is one way to approach this.

Layers have the advantage of being insulating and thus trapping heat closer to your body.  As you exercise, you produce heat due to your increased heart rate.  An increased heart rate contributes to thermogenesis, which is the process by which the body produces heat.  As a result, your core literally warms up, and having additional layers on in this area keeps the heat that you’re producing closer to you.  As long as the layers are all moisture-wicking, they will carry moisture away from your skin and body while simultaneously keeping as much heat as possible close to you.

Because you will produce more heat and get warmer as you exercise, an important tactic to deploy when dressing for Winter workouts - and definitely when considering layers - is to dress like it is 10-15ºF warmer than the ambient conditions actually are.  Your workout type and sport will impact what end of this range you should consider.  For example, runners should aim for the higher end (around 15ºF) of this range; cyclists should aim for the lower end (around 10ºF) of the range.  This difference has to do with the average heart rates sustained by athletes in each of these sports (and therefore the amount of thermogenesis that occurs during each sport) and the difference in ambient conditions (cyclists generate their own “wind” as they cut through the air at a faster velocity than runners).  Yes, you might feel a little chilly for the first 10-15 minutes of your workout, but you’ll be better off for the rest of it.  Embrace the Discomfort Dragon for those 10-15 minutes; I promise, you’ll live to tell the tale.

Tip #4 - Invest in Quality Gear Items

Having the right gear really does make all the difference when it comes to workouts, and cold weather workouts are not an exception to this.  If you don’t have the right gear, you will not feel safe or comfortable doing workouts, which can be demotivating and can absolutely lead to a reduction in exercise and a break in consistency.  Because they use more materials in their construction, Winter gear items are generally more expensive than their warmer-weather counterparts.  That being said, it is very worth it to invest in quality gear items so that you can remain consistent through this season.

You don’t need to have a lot of the same types of items (such as multiple jackets, gloves, bottoms, tops, etc.).  But you should have at least one of each category of item, and I encourage you to make the investment into higher quality (which is almost always going to mean higher-priced) items.  Quality gear items are an investment that can pay dividends for years to come.  Because you use them for a limited time during the cold weather season each year, they can last many years.  For instance, I’ve had my cold weather workout cycling and running jackets each for more than 10 years now. 

Here are the high-quality cold weather gear items that I personally have acquired and found valuable over the years:

• Thermal Running Tights
• Thermal Cycling Bib Tights
• Reflective and waterproof cycling jacket
• High-visibility and water-resistant running jacket
• Thermal running vest
• Crew running socks
• Crew cycling socks
• Thermal headband
• Balaclava
• Winter-specific cycling helmet
• Heated running gloves
• Thermal cycling gloves
• Ski goggles
• Waterproof cycling shoes
• Waterproof running shoes with traction (aka waterproof trail running shoes)

Tip #5 - Stick to What Works for You

The single most common mistake I observe athletes making when it comes to dressing for Winter and cold weather workouts is that they overthink their gear choices.  Quite honestly, this has only gotten worse as weather forecasts (specifically available through apps on our smart phones) have become longer-term and more prevalent.  Even as recently as 30 years ago, you could only get weather forecasts 2-4 times per day, and you had to get those via media sources such as a newspaper or the local news.  Now, we can check the forecast any time and - most harmfully - as many times as we want.  Knowing this, the makers of these apps often change forecasts, thereby keeping us more engaged with their platforms (and their advertisers).

Maintaining a good workout log is an excellent idea for so many reasons, but in the context of this conversation, it’s an excellent way to track what you wear in different conditions and how those choices worked for you.  Over time, you can dial in on exactly what gear items work for you in certain conditions.  Using that information, you can make informed and confident choices in future workouts based on the conditions that will be in play for those workouts.

Using myself as an example, here are some of the gear “rules” that I implement for various ambient conditions when I am running:

• If it is above 50ºF (actual temperature, not real feel), I wear shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and running socks.
• If it is between 40-50ºF (actual temperature, not real feel), I wear shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, running socks, and light gloves.
• If it is between 35-39ºF (actual temperature, not real feel), I wear capri running tights, running socks, a long-sleeved shirt, running socks, a thermal headband, and light gloves. 
• If it is between 21-34ºF (actual temperature, not real feel), I wear thermal running tights, a long-sleeved shirt, crew running socks, a thermal headband, and heated gloves.
• If it is between 5-20ºF (actual temperature, not real feel),  I wear thermal running tights, a long-sleeved shirt, a jacket, crew running socks, a thermal headband, and heated gloves.
• If it is below 5ºF (actual temperature, not real feel),  I wear thermal running tights, a long-sleeved shirt, a jacket, crew running socks, a balaclava, ski goggles, toe warmers, and heated gloves.
• I wear regular running shoes in all circumstances unless it is actively snowing or the surface is snow-covered.  If it is actively snowing and/or the running surface is snow-covered, I wear waterproof trail running shoes.

At this stage of my endurance sports athletic career, I never deviate from this.  I know from loads of trial and error that this is definitely what works for me in these conditions.  I do not second-guess it, and I do not let other people’s comments or choices influence what I know works for me.  I look at the ambient conditions at the time that I will be running, and I deploy the appropriate gear choices.

But that  is where I see a lot of athletes go astray.  Other athletes comment on what they’re wearing or they see that other athletes are dressed differently from them, which makes them second-guess themselves.  They compulsively overcheck the weather, and convince themselves that they are going to be too cold (or, much less frequently, too hot) and change their gear selections accordingly.

Here’s the truth of it: What works for you might very well be extremely different from what works for someone else in those very same conditions.  A group of friends that I train with weekly always dresses more warmly than I do.  They comment on my choices very regularly.  But I know that I tend to get very warm once I start a workout, and I have learned to make gear choices accordingly.  As a result, I cannot remember the last Winter workout I did where I was too cold.  Sticking to what you know works for you - not what works for someone else or what someone who doesn't know what it’s like to exist in your body thinks will work for you - is the best practice.

The Bottom Line

Staying active through the Winter has enormous mental and physical benefits and may very well make the difference between you reaching or missing your goals in the coming season.  Ensuring that you stay active through this season is key, and dressing appropriately for workouts this time of year is perhaps the most significant thing you can do to help motivate you to do so.  Invest in quality pieces, note what works and doesn’t work for you over time, and develop your own personal gear system for Winter workouts.  By embracing the Discomfort Dragon and not letting the cold bother you anyway, you will be mentally and physically stronger both through this season and in the season to come.