Practising Through Winter

A cold body is a genuinely different body and the same practice does not work in it. Four things to change.

What cold does

Tissue is less compliant. Muscle and connective tissue deform less readily at lower temperature. Your available range is smaller, sometimes by a lot.

And it does not tell you. This is the important part. Cold tissue is less sensitive as well as less compliant, so the warning that you have gone too far arrives later. The combination — less range, less warning — is why cold-weather injuries happen at depths that would be safe in summer.

Circulation to the extremities drops. Cold hands and feet, and less feedback from them, which affects balance and grip.

The body wants to hold. Cold produces a general low-level muscular tension, particularly around the neck and shoulders.

Change one: double the warm-up

Ten minutes is not enough in a cold room. Twenty is closer.

Structure it as a ramp:

• Five minutes of small, gentle movement — cat-cow, gentle twists, shoulder rolls, ankle and wrist circles. Nothing near end range.
• Five to ten minutes of something that generates heat — sun salutations, or repeated standing poses at a brisk pace, or simply moving between Downward Dog and a lunge.
• Five minutes of moderate shapes before anything demanding.

The test: you should be genuinely warm — slightly damp, breathing harder — before the main work starts. If you are not, keep warming up.

Change two: keep layers on longer

The instinct is to strip down at the start because you expect to warm up. Do the reverse: start with more on than feels necessary and remove layers when you are actually warm, which is usually fifteen or twenty minutes in.

Socks are worth keeping on through the warm-up and taking off for standing poses, where you need the foot's grip and feedback.

And put layers back on for the end. This is the one people get wrong. Floor work and Savasana involve twenty minutes of stillness, during which body temperature falls fast. A cold Savasana achieves nothing — a cooling body will not release, and you spend ten minutes tensing rather than settling.

Jumper on, socks on, blanket over the top. Every time.

Change three: shift what the practice contains

Lean towards: standing poses, sun salutations, strength work, anything that generates internal heat. These work well in the cold and warm you as you go.

Lean away from: long passive holds early in the session. Yin in a cold room is unproductive and mildly risky — sustained load on cold tissue at end range is exactly the combination to avoid.

If you want long holds, do them at the end, when you are warm, and do them at a lower intensity than in summer. Four out of ten rather than six.

Restorative work is fine in the cold provided you are properly covered. It is one of the few contexts where being still is the point, so the answer is blankets rather than a different practice.

Change four: warm the room, not just the body

Heating a room by a few degrees is not a luxury; it changes what you can safely do.

A practical target: around 20°C for a moving practice, warmer for restorative work.

Cheap improvements: close the door and let the room warm for twenty minutes before you start. Practise in the warmest room rather than the most convenient one. A rug or an extra mat under yours, because heat is lost downward into a cold floor faster than most people expect — a stone or tile floor draws a surprising amount.

Cold hands in Downward Dog are a real grip problem. Rub them together, or do the first few rounds with the hands on a block.

The winter shape of a practice

A sequence that suits the season:

• Twenty minutes warming. Gentle movement, then sun salutations, then standing poses at a moderate pace.
• Twenty minutes main work. Standing strength, or backbends, or shoulders. Something that keeps you working.
• Ten minutes floor work, at moderate intensity, once you are properly warm.
• Ten minutes restorative and Savasana, fully covered.

Note the proportions: more warming and less deep work than a summer practice, and the passive work at the end rather than distributed.

Morning practice in winter

Hardest case: cold room, cold body, coldest hour of the day.

Allow more time, not the same time compressed.

Start with breath work under a blanket, sitting up, for five minutes. It costs nothing and it starts the system.

Move before you stretch. Sun salutations before anything held.

Accept a smaller practice. Twenty-five well-warmed minutes is better than forty-five in which the first twenty were cold and the deep work happened too early.

The one thing not to do

Do not judge your practice by its summer depth.

Your range in January is not your range in July, and the difference can be considerable. Chasing a summer forward fold in a cold room is the most reliable way to injure a hamstring, and hamstring injuries at the sitting bone take months.

Keep a separate winter baseline. It is not a decline.