Does the Body Work Harder Jogging in the Cold?

The effects of cold temperature on the body during exercise are harder to gage than hot weather, since it depends on how cold you are, how hard your heart works and your overall caloric expenditure. Generally, your body will work harder jogging in the cold than it will at room temperature, but jogging in hot weather makes it work even harder.

  1. Research

    • A study cited by the American Council on Exercise measured the respiratory rate among exercisers at four different temperatures. During the two colder temperatures, subjects had a higher respiratory exchange ratio, which indicates that they were using more carbohydrate stores relative to fat. Still, how hard your body works depends on how cold it is. In temperatures cold enough to trigger shivering, your body will work even harder than it will in hot temperatures.

    Mechanism

    • Whenever your body is exposed to extremes in temperature, it adjusts through a process called thermoregulation. When you're exposed to extreme cold during a jog, your body wants to maintain your core body temperature and reduce the amount of heat lost. One of the ways it does this is by constricting blood vessels in periphery fatty tissues, which causes your heart to work harder to pump blood through the constricted pathways.

    Effects

    • Exactly how cold weather affects your exercise results depends on who you ask. According to "The New York Times," cold temperatures actually slow down metabolism, possibly due to the constriction of blood vessels in fatty tissue. The "Baltimore Sun," on the other hand, says exercising in cold weather forces your body to work harder, resulting in increases in caloric expenditure as your body works to maintain core temperature.

    Cold vs. Heat

    • Although the cold can make your body work harder during a jog, it won't have the same effect as jogging on a hot summer day. It actually takes much more energy to consistently cool your body off through sweating than it does to warm it up during a cold jog.