How Indoor Training During Rainy Season Can Reduce Injury Risk

How do you perceive the rainy season? Many athletes feel trapped and increasingly frustrated. They can’t go outside to train in the fresh air. They’re stuck inside on treadmills, ellipticals, and stationary bikes. Weights and weightlifting equipment aren’t appealing when your body is craving sunshine.

Even when you’re feeling confined by four walls and artificial lighting, indoor training offers multiple benefits. One of the biggest reasons is that indoor training reduces your risk of injury. Safety improves in the following ways.

Better Form

When it’s wet outside, your body focuses on keeping your center of gravity directly over your feet. This leads to a shorter stride. It’s a good way to avoid slipping, but it changes how your foot hits the ground, increasing the risk of strain on your feet and ankles.

That shift in form affects the tension in certain muscles, specifically your neck, shoulders, and core. You’re more likely to develop back and hip pain. The pain continues to change how you stand or move, straining other muscles due to uneven use.

Working out indoors on equipment ensures you maintain proper form. You’re not at risk of slipping on mud or tripping over uneven pavement hidden in a puddle. Working on a treadmill, an elliptical, or an indoor track reduces the risk.

Full Visibility

Working outside in the rain affects your visibility. Rain falls on your face and into your eyes. You can run with goggles, but they fog up and make it hard to see. 

If you’re running on a road, trail, or sidewalk, there’s a puddle in the way. How deep is the hole below that puddle? If you don’t avoid it, it could be deeper than expected. It could be hiding a ridge or tree root that trips you or causes a twisted ankle.

Your visibility on the road is also a problem. If it’s foggy, will a car see you in time? If the windshield is foggy due to the car’s interior humidity, a driver may not be able to stop in time. Wet roads require more braking distance. Cars that collide might spin into pedestrians on a sidewalk. 

Training indoors keeps you safe by keeping you away from traffic and obstacles on trails, sidewalks, and road shoulders. If you hate the lack of scenery in your home gym or fitness facility, watch travel videos while you walk on a treadmill or ride a stationary bike.

Improved Traction

Pavement and trails become slick when wet. Your shoes might have great tread, but they won’t have the same traction as on dry ground. Traction is critical to your stability and the transfer of force with each step, jump, or skip.

Poor traction is a leading cause of slip-and-fall accidents. You don’t intend to slip, but slick soil, grass, or pavement can cause it. If you don’t regain your balance in time, you fall. That fall can lead to broken bones, sprains, torn ligaments, head injuries, cuts, and bruises. Even if you avoid a fall, the effort to regain balance may pull a muscle.

One of the most common injuries from a slip and fall is a wrist fracture. It’s instinctive to put your hand out to stop your fall. The force of the sudden impact that forces your wrist back is enough to fracture bones or stretch or tear the ligaments that support the wrist bones.

You may never slip, but your muscles, joints, and ligaments must continually make small adjustments to keep you stable on wet ground. Those adjustments make the muscles work harder, which increases wear and tear.

Self-Assessment

When you use a treadmill, elliptical, stationary bike, or other fitness equipment, you can focus on how you feel during the workout. You aren’t splitting your attention between your hike, run, or practice and environmental hazards like hornets or bees, loose dogs, or cars.

Because your attention is focused only on your body during the workout, you’re able to self-assess how you feel, when you’re working out one muscle group more than another, or when you’re not as balanced as you must be.

It’s a good time to also focus on your mental health. Physical strength is important, but you need to keep your mental health in shape, too. Indoor fitness gives you time to vent frustrations that increase anxiety or to practice relaxation techniques that ease stress.

Steady Training Sessions

Indoor workouts provide stability and consistency. You can’t make an excuse. There’s no “I can’t go out today, it’s pouring rain.” You go to the gym and work out for as long as you always do. It’s consistent.

You don’t try to double up on your workout the next day to make up for the one you cut short because of the weather. Consistent exercise patterns lower the risk of tendon injuries or stress fractures.

When spring arrives and the rainy season ends, you’re still in top form and ready to go back to your outdoor workouts. You haven’t lost momentum, and you don’t have to start from scratch.

Warmer Indoor Climate

While there are some benefits to working out in a cold climate, there are also downsides. In cold weather, you might burn a tiny amount of extra fat. Shivering burns extra calories, but it’s unlikely that you’re going to shiver when you’re working out because your body heats up.

Here’s the interesting thing: several years ago, a study examined differences between training in warm and cold climates. A group of 20 cyclists trained in a warm or cold environment for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days, some cyclists were switched from warm to cold training. The cyclists who had trained in a warm environment had:

• Better cardiac output
• Maximum sustainable power output
• More blood plasma

When a room is warm and humid, it’s harder for sweat to evaporate. Your core temperature rises, making the workout feel more intense. A warm body causes your blood vessels to dilate, allowing more oxygen and nutrients to reach your tissues. 

Fresno Sports & Orthopedics Helps You Get In Shape

Indoor training doesn’t have to be boring. Premium Sports & Orthopedics offers EMS training. Get suited up and follow the guided exercises under a doctor’s supervision. Small electrical impulses target muscles in motion, causing them to contract more forcefully without extra effort. This maximizes the benefit you can get with every movement.

EMS training is tailored to you and ensures that each muscle group is targeted. There are no weights. Your joints are protected from excessive strain. Best of all, your body becomes toned and shaped without hours of daily workouts. EMS training lasts about half an hour, once or twice a week. Book a session online today.

Sources:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2963322/

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/fulltext/2013/03000/bikram_yoga_training_and_physical_fitness_in.35.aspx