Anti-Aging:  8 Tips for Facing Winter

By Coach John Hughes

Are you grumpy anticipating winter with even less daylight and colder weather? Wondering if you can ride outdoors a few more weeks before putting the bike on the trainer? Concerned you’ll develop the done-laps condition when your belly done lap over your belt?

I’m writing a series of columns about winter activities:

• Endurance riding
• Riding outdoors
• The value of intensity workouts
• Making the most of time on the trainer
• Cross-training
• Auxiliary fitness activities
• Fitting activities into a busy day
• Nutrition
• Weight management

1. Motivation

When you got out of bed this morning did you think, “This morning I’ll do a fun ride on the trainer?” Or, ugh, “I’ll do it later.” Were you looking forward to your stretching and core exercises? Or did you think “how boring?” Did you think, “I get to do my strength training?” Or, “That’ll hurt.”

Tossing your leg over the top tube for an outdoor ride in the summer is fun (unless it’s raining.) Getting and staying motivated in the winter is harder.

Ask yourself why you exercise in general (not just in the off-season). Here are some possible reasons:

1. Overall good health to enjoy life and do things with your family.
2. Longevity to enjoy your grandkids.
3. Personal fitness.
4. Endorphins.
5. Achieve personal goals.

Then ask yourself how exercising in different ways in the off-season helps you to achieve the above. You can choose various activities as means to these ends, not as “shoulds.” 

Choose small, specific goals.  For example, doing aerobic activities at least four days a week totaling at least 2:30 hours. Playing with your grandkids most weekends. Increasing your leg strength by at least 10%.

I wrote this column on Anti-Aging: How to Get and Stay Motivated

2. Variety

You’ll have more motivation if you do a variety of activities rather than just grinding through the same workouts every week. You’ll also do more for your overall health and longevity.

Your body is an interrelated set of muscles, ligaments, tendons, nerves and bones.  To age optimally you need to pay attention to all of these.

3. Activities for your full body

How to care for your entire body is explained in the recommendations of Physical Activity for Americans, 2^nd ed. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 2018] and Exercise and Physical Activity for Older Adults. [American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM). 2009]

In sum these are the recommendations:

Aerobic activity: At least 30 minutes most days:

• 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) to 300 minutes (5 hours) a week of moderate-intensity, or
• 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) to 150 minutes (2 hours and 30 minutes) a week of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or
• An equivalent combination of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity.
• Additional health benefits result from even more moderate-intensity aerobic activity than then 300 minutes (5 hours) a week.

Muscle strength training

In addition to aerobic activity all adults should do muscle-strengthening activities of moderate or greater intensity involving all the major muscle groups. The improvement in, or maintenance of, muscular strength is specific to the muscles used during the activity, so a variety of activities is important. These should include legs, hips, chest, back, core, shoulders and arms.

Balance activities.

Practicing balance increases your ability to resist forces either within or outside the body, e.g., unexpectedly stepping off a curb or being jostled in a crowd. Balance exercises are important to improve activities of daily living, to reduce the risk of falling and to reduce the risk of injury if you do fall.

Flexibility

Older adults should maintain the flexibility necessary for regular physical activity and the activities of daily living. Stretching is effective in increasing flexibility.

Weight-bearing exercise

The principle of overload applies to your bones just like it does to your muscles. If you overload your bones, they at least maintain bone health, reducing the risk of weaker, fragile bones. The greater the load, the stronger the bones get.

The recommendations in detail are explained in this column:  Anti-Aging New Exercise Recommendations

4. Consistency

You know the adage use it or lose it.  Unfortunately the “lose it” part happens even faster as we age. The “use it” part becomes more important the older we get.  The recommendation for aerobic activity is 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week.

Consistency is easy in the summer but takes more will power in the winter.  Here’s an easy way to be consistent.

5. Aerobic exercise snacks

You don’t need to do 30 minutes of consistent aerobic exercise most days.  A small study tested the effects of exercise snacks on improving fitness. The study used 24 healthy but inactive college students. Twelve continued their normal activities and 12 climbed three flights of stairs (60 steps) as fast as they could using the handrail for safety. The total climb took about 20 seconds. They repeated the climbs two more times during the day for a total of just one minute of climbing.  “By the end of six weeks, the exercisers had increased their aerobic fitness by about 5 percent. They also showed improvements in leg power and could generate more power while cycling.” The usual caveats apply: this was a very small study of college students, not older adults.

6. Multi-component physical activities

Note the title is “physical activities” not “exercises” because multi-component activities are more like activities of daily living than exercise programs. A simple example is using free weights instead of machines for strength training. Exercise scientists recommend squats.  (New York Times The Power of the Squat) Squats with some sort of load (a backpack with canned goods, holding containers of kitty litter, dumbbells, a barbell, etc.) are simultaneously strength training and weight-bearing. Split squats and lunges also work on balance. In addition to your legs, squats train your core and your upper back, help maintain the flexibility, stability and function of your hips, knees and ankles and work on your balance.

7. Other exercise snacks

You can also exercise in small bites of the other recommendations of the ACSM:

• Muscle strength training: My column Anti-Aging: 4 Essential Year-Round Home Resistance Exercises provides exercises for your legs, core, upper body and upper back, which take about 20 total minutes. You can do the exercises without any special equipment. Before breakfast you could do a set of push-ups for your upper body and rhomboid pulls for your upper back; in the evening bird dogs for your core while watching television and then split squats while brushing your teeth.
• Balance: My column Anti-Aging: Why Practicing Balance Is Important has a progressive set of exercises starting with standing on one leg and then standing on one leg while rotating your head and then while moving your arms. You could easily do these while standing in line at the grocery store. Walking in a line, heel to toe also improves your balance, which you could do walking to or from your car.
• Flexibility: My column Anti-Aging: Flexibility in 30 Minutes a Week gives you nine key stretches to do for 10 minutes three days a week. During each of those darn commercials you could do a stretch or two.
• Weight-bearing: The activities in this column can be mixed in throughout the day:  Anti-Aging: 9 Weight-Bearing Activities for Strong Bones. Climbing stairs is a good weight bearing activity. Descending stairs loads and strengthens your bones more because of the impact of your foot landing on the lower step. The various leg strength exercises are also weight bearing.

8. Routine of activities

A planned weekly routine may help you to do all the different kinds of activities: Monday, Wednesday and Friday you ride the trainer. Monday – Thursday evenings you do your stretching and core while watching TV. Or a routine may get boring. My friend Muffy Ritz says exercising is like making chocolate chip cookies.  You need all the different ingredients in the correct quantities. But you can mix the ingredients in any order. And be careful not to over-bake them

Don’t take the off-season literally! My eBooks tell you what to do:

Productive Off-Season Training

My eBook is both for people who ride primarily for health and also those who ride for recreation. It includes:

• A 12-week off-season exercise program to keep you healthy during the winter months.
• A 12-week, more intensive off-season program for recreational riders to build your endurance, power and speed, preparing for base training.

The 26-page Productive Off-Season Training  is $4.99.

My 3-article Off-Season bundle includes:

1. Productive Off-Season Training with:
2. A 12-week off-season exercise program to keep you healthy during the winter months.
3. A 12-week, more intensive off-season program for recreational riders to build your endurance, power and speed, preparing for base training.
4. Gaining a Mental Edge: Using Sports Psychology to Improve Your Cycling Most cyclists can get greater improvement from investing some time each week in practicing mental skills than they could investing the same amount of time in training! I show you how.
5. Year-Round Cycling: How to Extend Your Cycling Season  I give you six factors to successfully ride year-round, with in-depth information on all: 1) Goal-Setting and Planning; 2) Training; 3) Clothing and Equipment; 4) Nutrition; 5) Technique; 6) Motivation.

The 60-page Off-Season bundle is $13.50, a savings of $3.50 off the full price of purchasing all 3 articles individually.

Anti-Aging: 12 Ways You Can Slow the Aging Process

Anti-Aging has illustrated chapters on each of the types of fitness recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine: aerobic, high intensity, strength, flexibility, balance and weight-bearing workouts. Anti-Aging: 12 Ways You Can Slow the Aging Process incorporates the latest research and most of it is new material not published in his previous eArticles on cycling past 50, 60 and beyond. It’s your comprehensive guide to continuing to ride well into your 80s and even your 90s.

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Coach John Hughes earned coaching certifications from USA Cycling and the National Strength and Conditioning Association. John’s cycling career includes course records in the Boston-Montreal-Boston 1200-km randonnée and the Furnace Creek 508, a Race Across AMerica (RAAM) qualifier. He has ridden solo RAAM twice and is a 5-time finisher of the 1200-km Paris-Brest-Paris. He has written over 40 eBooks and eArticles on cycling training and nutrition, available in RBR’s eBookstore at Coach John Hughes. Click to read John’s full bio.