Weather May Impact Your Exercise Routine

July 2 2014

Weather May Impact Your Exercise Routine

It’s hard to muster up the motivation to get up and exercise when it’s dreary, rainy day outside. Even if you have all of the equipment to exercise from the comfort of your own home, bad weather has a weird effect that causes people to not want to exercise.

Study Links Bad Weather To Lower Levels of Exercise

This is a phenomenon that most people have known about for quite some time; however, a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin took a deeper look into the connection between weather and exercise, revealing just how much of an impact it truly has.

Researchers found that many counties in the southeast — where summers are hot and wet — experienced higher rates of obesity and lower rates of exercise, whereas counties in the southwest — where summers are regularly cool and dry — experienced lowered rates of obesity and higher rates of exercise.

It’s not just rain that prevents people from exercising and staying active; it can also be the heat. With numerous counties spanning from the east coast to west experiencing record-setting temperatures, people are opting to stay indoors rather than getting outside and exercise. Paul von Hippel, assistant professor and the study’s co-author, said the following:

"Around June or July here, it starts getting hard to think about going outside for a jog — or even a brisk walk — after work, which is close to the hottest part of the day. You have to come up with a strategy for staying active in the summer. Are you going to get out in the early morning, which is the coolest part of the day? Are you going to swim? Or are you going to do something indoors, like basketball or ice skating or just walking on a treadmill?"

Of course, weather shouldn’t impact your normal exercise routine. Granted, there are some activities, such as running or jogging outside, that you won’t be able to perform if it’s pouring down rain, but there are still plenty of viable alternatives.

Whether you’re goal is to build muscle or lose weight (or both), you should set up indoor exercise alternatives in the event that mother nature throws you a curve ball. A pair of medium-weight dumbbells will allow you to perform a full-body strength-training workout from inside your home.

Findings from this study can be found in the July issue of American Journal of Public Health.

Rainy window photo courtesy of Yuval Haimovits via Flickr Creative Commons.