Temperature affects you body significantly during exercise, increasing your heart rate and kicking off a process known as thermoregulation. During thermoregulation, your body works to maintain a safe, consistent body temperature by conserving heat in cold weather and releasing excess heat in warm weather. Warm weather exercise may be more comfortable and rewarding than cold weather exercise, but there are benefits to both.

Warm Weather Benefits

Aside from immeasurable motivational benefits to working out on a warm, sunny day, there are a host of physical benefits to doing your workouts under the sun. On a mild day, your body doesn't have to work hard to regulate its core temperature, since you aren't workout out in extreme heat. Additionally, warm weather exercise doesn't constrict blood vessels and allows you to exercise without bundling up.

Cold Weather Benefits

Depending on how cold it is, you can get a harder workout than you can on a warm day. If you're exercising in particularly frigid temperatures, your body will expend more energy to regulate core temperature, increasing your heart rate and boosting the number of calories you burn during a workout.


As long as you stay hydrated, exercising on a warm day presents few dangers. The most dangerous conditions to work out in are those that involve extremes in temperature. Cold weather exercise can lead to hypothermic symptoms, while exercising in extreme heat can lead to heat stroke and other ailments. When exercising in the cold, you need to think more about your clothing and your exposure to the elements.

The Verdict

Since cold temperatures are somewhat extreme in nature, you're better off working out in warm weather. It costs more energy to cool you down in the heat than it does to warm you up in the cold, but as long as you're not running on a sweltering day, this will maximize your training results. A study cited by the American Council on Exercise demonstrated that subjects working out in warm, moderate temperature zones were capable to exercising for longer periods of time than those exposed to extreme cold or extreme heat.

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