4 Reasons to Move Your Workout Outdoors

Exercising out in nature has powerful physical and mental benefits

Some of us don’t have easy access to wild and beautiful places, but we can still look for beauty and wonder each time we venture outdoors. Photo by Ray Wirth.

My workout habits took a dramatic turn 20 years ago when a state-of-the-art YMCA facility complete with a pool, weight room, exercise machines, and running track was built directly across the street from my house. For 15 years, I logged time on treadmills, rowing machines, and stationary bikes. I ran laps on the track and swam laps in the pool. I was a regular in the weight room and a gym rat on the playing court. All these indoor workouts benefited my health, fitness, and well-being.

Yet something was missing.

Five years ago, when my family and I moved to a different house 20 minutes from the YMCA, I decided not to renew my membership. Yes, it was partly about the driving time and the cost, but it was also more than that.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not knocking indoor workouts or suggesting all workouts need to be outdoors. However, my experience and intuition have led me to believe outdoor workouts are better. Recently, I’ve been checking out what others are saying about the advantages of outdoor exercise. Below are some important mental and physical benefits you gain by moving at least some of your workouts outdoors.

1. Get more from the same workout, especially in the winter

To the extent that you live in a cold-weather climate, you can get extra benefits by exercising outside. Surprising but true: running an 8-minute mile outdoors in cold weather improves your fitness more than running a mile at the same pace indoors in a climate-controlled space.

First, exercising in the cold burns more calories as your body works to maintain 98.6. Second, spending time in the cold leads to a decrease in white fat and an increase in healthy brown fat, which has been found to boost metabolism and reduce the incidence of diabetes. Third, assuming you have a healthy cardiovascular system that can bear the added load, exercising in the cold does more to strengthen your heart. This is because the cold constricts your blood vessels and requires your heart to work harder than it would if completing the same workout indoors.

2. Reduce stress and feel happier.

Both exercise and spending time in nature reduce mental stress, so it makes sense that they can be combined for a powerful effect.

While exercise reduces stress by releasing endocannabinoids, time in nature reduces stress by lowering cortisol levels. This means that when you exercise outdoors in blue and green spaces you get both the endocannabinoid release and the cortisol reduction. You double your rewards.

Added benefits to working out in natural environments include improved mood, increased focus, lowered blood pressure, and strengthened immune system. Plus you get that much-needed vitamin D. It’s amazing that all these health benefits can be gained by the simple act of going out the door. No subscription or prescription is required. Lots of people feel that they are happiest outside — and now science is helping us understand why.

3. Gain woods wisdom and street smarts. Prepare for future adventures.

Outdoor exercise is less specialized, less controllable, less predictable — and, in the long term, this is a benefit. That indoor exercise is specialized means it doesn’t do as much to prepare you for the rest of life. In other words, you may be able to crush it on the stair stepper machine, but that doesn’t make you a mountain climber.

No one learns map & compass skills while on a treadmill. No one learns to fix a flat tire while riding a stationary bike. No one learns how clouds predict the weather while swimming in a lap pool. Dealing with equipment, navigation, equipment breakdowns, and weather may seem like frustrating interruptions in the short term. But, in the long term, these can be appreciated as preparation for living a bigger, better, more adventurous future life.

4. Make Memories & Live More Fully

To the extent that your outdoor exercise involves going to new places and experiencing new things, it has the potential to create memories that are richer and more detailed than those gained in the course of your normal daily routine.

Brain scientists explain that the experience of the unfamiliar stimulates the brain and helps you to be more fully present. Experiencing newness helps counter the all-too-common sense that life is passing you by. This is because the memory of a new experience is especially vivid. The vividness of this memory, in turn, provides the sense that the experience lasted much longer than it did.

“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Good news: gaining access to this type of experience doesn’t require a 7-day vacation and plane ticket to the Maldives. The experience of novelty can be gained by something as simple as taking a different route or stepping a few feet off a familiar trail.

More good news: nature is always changing. If you pay attention, nature is continually providing something new. Going outdoors at a different time of day. Going in a different season. Take the time to notice plants, animals, and birds. All these can be sources of the “new.” All can lead to the sense that your days have grown richer and larger.

Nature is always showing us something new. We may miss out on a great deal — unless we go outside to find it. Photo by Ray Wirth.

Go outside and see

It’s tempting to believe we can get the same workout — and get it more quickly — when exercising indoors. The truth is when we limit our workouts to the indoors, we miss out on important mental and physical benefits. We are missing what Thoreau was missing before he headed to Walden Pond and wrote, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” We are missing out on an assortment of things that are pretty much akin to happiness.

Start small. If your workouts are currently all inside, you might begin by choosing one day a week to exercise outside. Be patient. It may take a few attempts to get things dialed in in terms of where to go, what to do, clothing, and gear. Once you begin to appreciate the benefits of exercising outside, your life may never be the same. Go outside and see.

To read more about the experience of awe, see Brad Stulberg’s excellent piece, “The Natural Cure for Burnout Is Profound and Utter Awe”

To read more about the power of outdoor exercise, see my piece, “Almost Always Better Than You Think: And other takeaways from spending an hour or more outside, every day for a year”