How to exercise in hot and humid weather: 4 things you can do to stay cooler

Anyone who has gone for a jog on a hot, muggy day knows how miserable it can be – not only because your shirt is glued to your back, experts say, but also because humidity makes exercise much more challenging.

This is because the sweat on your skin doesn’t easily evaporate, said John Eric Smith, an associate professor of exercise physiology at Mississippi State University. Sweat itself doesn’t cool you, he said, but rather the evaporation of sweat. When the air is already thick with water vapour, however, “there’s nowhere for the moisture on our skin to go,” he said.

As a result, humid air makes it harder for your body to cool down. This can cause the cardiovascular system to become stressed, reducing blood flow to the muscles, and tires us more quickly than in drier climes. While there isn’t much independent research on how humidity affects the body, small studies on the topic have consistently found that athletes begin to tire more quickly once the relative humidity reaches around 60 per cent.

But this doesn’t mean you have to move all of your workouts inside if you live in an area that feels like a sauna. Here are four things you can do to stay cooler.

GIVE YOUR BODY A COUPLE WEEKS TO ADJUST

The more you exercise in both heat and humidity, the more your body will adapt and improve its ability to cool itself, Dr Smith said. (The same is true, only reversed, for cold weather.) But because exercising in hot, humid weather is more taxing on the body than doing so in drier conditions, it’s vital to give yourself time to adjust so you can prevent overheating and exhaustion.

In just a few days, your body will begin to sweat more and sooner, which will help it regulate its temperature, Dr Smith said. You’ll even start to see an