Mark Brown
October 31, 2021
Last year was my first year lifting in a mostly outdoor setting and it taught me a few lessons I had never experienced or even thought of. A lot of it was learning how equipment and the human body reacts to a strength training in a mostly outdoor setting. Each season brings its own flavor to the challenges one faces when strength training. Lifting in the garage has made me a better lifter because it’s made me more aware of everything that goes into training. Today I want to go over some things I learned from the colder months.
Equipment comes in many forms and I will be very specific when I am talking about equipment that is lifted and equipment that is worn. I am only vaguely familiar with fully equipped lifting because only use powerlifting belts and straps when necessary. I do however use elbow and knee sleeves as well as heavy wrist wraps every time I am lifting heavy, which is just about every time out. Last year was also the first time I ever owned a lot of gym equipment. I did own pairs of dumbbells up to 35 pounds minus a few and was gifted some kettle bells prior to 2020. I kept those in the basement of my house. My garage has some conditioning and cardio equipment as well as a tractor tire for flipping when I feel like doing it. Bars and racks were all brand new for me. I have added a few pieces here and there this year but the bulk of what I used was purchased last year.
One on the first things and most important things I learned last year was the importance of what to wear when the temperature outside dropped into the 30s and 40s. Compression shirts weren’t anything new to me last year. I’ve had a couple sleeveless shirts and long sleeve shirts for years now but I don’t wear them frequently when training. It’s just a case of me liking loose shirts when I lift just a bit more. I did wear one of my long sleeve compression shirts at work for about 6 months when I worked in a refrigerated part of the warehouse for 1 day of the week. I knew it helped keep heat in and trapped much better than my normal lifting tanks. Compression pants and shorts are a different story. I have always worn them for leg training. What I didn’t realize was how important those long sleeved compression shirts were for mobility during sessions, especially in the shoulders. My training partner, Pete, lifted during those cold night sessions in 3 layers, the top one being a sweatshirt and did say it had a negative effect on his mobility, especially on overhead presses. I could see it in the lifts. There was just too much material physically on him to complete the lifts as necessary. I felt the effect myself and made sure I wore a loose fitting thin hoodie or fleece top over the compression shirt. When combined with a space heater to get the temperature of the garage up to 50 or so, it was more than enough. The only annoyances were that elbow and knee sleeves don’t compress onto the joints they protect as well as they do on bare skin so they need to be constantly moved back into position and my leather heeled lifting shoes felt like they were shrinking on my feet in the cold weather. The corns I developed and physical discomfort I felt on my small toe have made me begin to look into a lifting shoe made of a material that won’t do that.
One thing people who lift in temperature regulated rooms never even think about is how the metal will feel against their skin when they pick up whatever they are lifting. I know I never had to think of it while lifting at the gym. I learned it doesn’t take a lot of cool weather to make a bar cold, and they get cold fast. I know that’s an incredibly obvious statement but I’d never even thought of lifting with physically cold equipment ever. I also learned that different styles of bars get colder than others do and at different rates. Power bars, deadlift bars and the like are solid and the smooth part of the bar will get quite a bit colder than the knurled part of them will. Specialty bars that employ a hollow piece of steel like an axel bar or my American Cambered Bar from EliteFTS get very cold, very fast. It does change things about the session in both obvious and not so obvious ways.
Anyone who lives in a part of the world where the majority of the months of November to March are 45 degrees fahrenheit or lower knows that hands are among the most vulnerable parts of the human body. The fact that they are the only parts of the body that actually make contact with the bar on 99.9% of the lifts anyone will ever do only further highlights their importance. I experienced the effect of cold bars on warm hands last year and felt the negative effects on the lifts throughout the sessions. There’s no real way to keep the bar warm during the resting phase, especially for powerlifting where I can go between 5 and 8 minutes between sets on on low rep sets. The hands receive a shock from the cold steel that will impact grip strength throughout the session. Fingers lose dexterity the longer they are exposed to cold, especially directly contacting the source of that cold. For a squat, regardless of type, this isn’t a big deal but it is quite so for presses and deadlifts. I countered cold bars using gloves for lifts I didn’t particularly care about training the grip part of the lift to keep my hands warm for lifts that required bare hands. The knurling is on the bars to help grip the bar after all. The other thing a cold bar does that effects the entire body is that it helps conduct the cold into ones body. The compression shirt helps to keep the body heat trapped, but that doesn’t stop the never-ending loop of body heat escaping and being replaced with more body heat. Everything is done with the end goal of gaining and maintaining the most amount of body heat as possible. Keeping the muscles warm is the most important thing to lifting heavier as the surrounding environment is actively getting colder.
Everything above are things I did to counter the colder environment at a physical and response base level. However, having a plan of attack with all of the elements in mind is how progress is actually made. This is where seasonal lifting conditions really come into play during the lifting year. Both strength and bodybuilding work require heavy amounts of volume so there must be a heavy time commitment. That means one can’t just counter colder environment training with shorter, heavier sessions if one’s plan is to lift once a day. Structuring lifting sessions to prioritize lifts becomes even more important than it was during the less extreme environmental parts of the year. Normally that means the heaviest compound movements and/or explosive movements like Weightlifting are weighted towards the front of the session. I began that process this past summer, but last year that was very much not the case. My sessions often combined the accessory work with the heavy compound movements in super sets so I was accelerating fatigue at a greater rate. I had no problem (and still don’t) deadlifting at the ending of a long session that involves squats because I believe working heavy into fatigue is an important wall to break down. These sessions in the garage lasted all the way till the end of December when the really cold weather hit. The human body is designed to deal with colder temperatures. I know this because we evolved to be warm blooded, not cold blooded. Like with everything in life, that warmth comes with a cost. One has to keep feeding it to keep the body doing what is designed to do. I found I went through my energy faster during sessions in extreme heat or cold so part of the overall plan has to be focused on food intake. In the past I have looked to protein for a pre workout boost but recently I have felt it slow me down so I have reached for easily accessible carbs in the form of granola bars. It’s really helped.
The real bastard of colder lifting sessions comes in the form of discipline and motivation. It’s so easy to get lost in strength training when its shorts and tank top weather. Colder weather has tested my discipline the most. It’s the reverse of the jokes at work about people using sick days on beautiful days in spring and summer. Our senses are the principle actors in tricks played on us and lost motivation or discipline. Seeing snow and feeling cold are just two of things that late fall and winter use to derail training. Icy conditions are a different thing altogether. It is akin to an unsafe squat rack to me. I am amused by how putting on more workout clothing makes me more acutely aware of my environment. I wore shorts into work for most of last years winter, even when temperatures dipped down into the negatives so work definitely didn’t give that same effect. I started using my gym membership in January of this year completely for about 4 months because I knew there was going to be a time during the year lifting in the garage was going to untenable for logistical reasons. It was always part of the plan. Temperatures in January and February dipped down into the teens and lower. Snow on the ground made it more difficult to physically get to and into the garage. The mindset to train was still there but logistics made the gym the smarter choice. Once that decision was made I moved into the mode of gym training, which can be done any time of the year.
I really enjoy lifting in the garage. The more I do it, the more I prefer it to being in a gym full of people in competition for the same benches and machines. I don’t say that in a “I hate people” kind of way. The kind of lifting I do would drive me crazy if I saw it in a gym. I am currently far more in the powerlifting camp than anything else. Like I wrote a month and half ago, no gym goer deserves to wait for someone doing powerlifting in a public gym. The garage brings more different environments to strength training than my commercial gym does so understanding what challenges those bring to it is just part of the learning process.
Life Through Lifting 