For the past decade or so, sports scientists have been obsessed with the benefits of heat training. The extra stress of heat triggers various adaptations that help you handle hot conditions, like more sweating. Some of these adaptations, like increased blood volume, may even give you a boost when competing in cooler conditions. As a result, many top athletes now incorporate elaborate heat protocols into their training.
What if the opposite is also true? At a conference in Montreal last month, a physiologist named Dominique Gagnon presented new data suggesting that cold training might offer some unique metabolic benefits that translate into enhanced health and endurance performance. It’s just a hypothesis at this point, based on a decade’s worth of incremental research. But as we head into the darkest, coldest months of the year, it’s kind of nice to think that our winter training might pack an extra punch.
Gagnon is a Canadian who recently moved from Laurentian University, in northern Ontario, to Finland’s University of Jyväskylä, three hours north of Helsinki. He knows cold, in other words. At…
