Summer is brilliant… until you’re halfway through a workout, sweating through your T-shirt, feeling a bit dizzy and wondering why this workout feels a lot "heavier" than usual. I’ve trained for over 20 years in all sorts of conditions. Including in my current home studio: an attic room above a garage with no air con and no heating. 🥶 So in winter it can be 0°C. 🥵...and in Summer between 30 - 35°C, easily (33 yesterday, yay!) So I’m not going to give you the usual lazy generic advice of, “Just train at 5am and drink plenty of water.” (which of course is always a simple go to option) Most people have jobs, kids, busy lives and enough going on already. You need a plan that works in real life, and getting up at 4:30am for a 5am workout and lugging around a 2 Litre jug of water is most probably off the cards for most people. First: Summer workouts are not the time to prove you’re hard - We are also not training for the olympics here... You can still train hard in summer. But “hard” does not mean ignoring the signals your body is giving you - of course the fitter your are the better your body can handle a workout in any condition you throw at it, but also age, heart health and general daily stress also play a role in the equation. So if you feel dizzy, nauseous, unusually weak, get a pounding headache, cramps, or feel faint: STOP! Don’t try to “push through it.” That is not the discipline we are chasing. That is how people turn a decent workout into a stupid decision. Here is an insight into what your body is going through... When you train in heat, your body is trying to do two jobs at once: 1. Send blood to your working muscles 2. Send blood to your skin to cool you down Add sweating, fluid loss and lost salts into the mix, and your blood volume and blood pressure can drop. That can leave you dizzy, light-headed, nauseous, weak or crampy. It can be a sign your body is struggling with heat and dehydration - not a sign you need more caffeine and a motivational speech to kick your butt!