Comprehensive winter health care common sense (Part Five)

Four essentials of winter fitness: warm-up activities must be adequate. In cold weather, all organ systems of the human body contract protectively, reducing the elasticity and extensibility of muscles, tendons, and ligaments while increasing muscle viscosity. The range of joint motion decreases, and with lower air humidity, people may feel dryness, irritability, stiffness in the body, and difficulty in stretching. Without warming up before exercising, it is easy to cause muscle strain or joint sprains. Therefore, when engaging in winter fitness exercises, especially outdoors, it is important to first perform sufficient warm-up activities. Through slow running, calisthenics, and light equipment practice, make the body warm and slightly sweaty before engaging in fitness activities. Clothing thickness should be appropriate. When doing fitness exercises in winter, start by wearing more clothing. Clothes should be lightweight and soft, not too tight. After warming up, remove some thick clothes. After exercising, if you sweat a lot, promptly dry the sweat, change out of sweaty sportswear, shoes, and socks, and put on clothes and hats to prevent heat loss. Additionally, when doing outdoor fitness exercises, it is important to keep warm. After exercising, although your body feels hot and you might want to cool down, avoid standing in windy areas. Instead, return indoors as soon as possible, dry the sweat, and change into clean clothes. As the saying goes: "Cold rises from the feet." Because the feet are far from the heart, they receive less blood supply, plus the subcutaneous fat layer on the feet is thin, making them poorly insulated. Therefore, during outdoor fitness activities in winter, it's particularly easy for the feet to feel cold. If the head, back, or feet get cold, cold air can invade the body through the skin and nose, not only affecting the effectiveness of fitness exercises but also causing colds. Some fitness enthusiasts like to wear athletic shoes throughout the winter, which isn't good. Rubber-soled shoes conduct heat quickly, and when not exercising, the soles of the feet can easily get cold, potentially leading to chilblains or arthritis. Environment should be comfortable. In winter, people tend to keep the windows of the gym tightly shut. However, in a state of rest, a person exhales over 20 liters of carbon dioxide per hour. If more than ten people exercise simultaneously, that amounts to over 200 liters per hour. Combined with sweat decomposition products and unpleasant gases expelled from the digestive tract, indoor air becomes severely polluted. People in such environments may experience dizziness, fatigue, nausea, and loss of appetite, resulting in poor exercise effects. Therefore, when exercising indoors, it is essential to ensure proper ventilation and fresh air. Additionally, it's not advisable to engage in fitness exercises in courtyards filled with coal smoke and polluted air. It is also important to note that during bad weather conditions, such as strong sandstorms, heavy snowfall, or extremely cold weather, it is best not to exercise outdoors. If you wish to exercise outside, choose sunny and wind-sheltered locations. The method of exercise should be appropriate. Due to the cold in winter, the body's fat content increases compared to other seasons, leading to an increase in weight and girth. This can be beneficial for underweight individuals who wish to gain weight, but it is less ideal for developing muscle contours, lines, and strength. Therefore, winter fitness requires increasing the intensity and force of exercises, adding more sets and repetitions, incorporating aerobic exercise content, and extending the duration of exercise to improve function, develop specialized physical qualities, consume body fat, and prevent excessive fat accumulation. Additionally, pay attention to keeping the rest intervals between exercises short, especially outdoors, avoiding prolonged standing in cold air. If the rest interval is too long, body temperature drops, causing muscles to transition from an excited state to fatigue, increasing viscosity. This not only affects exercise results but also makes it easier to get injured during the next set of exercises.