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Heat Training

© Cindy Lee Haddock

HEAT TRAINING

When it's hot outside, a lot of songwriters retire to the cool of air conditioned interiors if they want to keep writing and/or playing. What happens if your home cooling system goes out, though? What happens if you are asked to do a summer gig in 90F+ temperatures? What if the stage you are on is so well lit that you feel cooked in your nice suit before you've been on five minutes? Next time it does heat up in your area, think of this as a time to not hide from the problem, but get yourself ready for stardom. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

TAKE IT SLOW

One thing you might remember if you are in a hot place is the more you move, the warmer you get. This is great if you want to keep warm, but being active in heat is a lot harder on your body if you aren't used to it. One easy way to get used to this is to try short walks when it is hot outside. Take a water bottle with you, and try to keep hydrated, especially if you really start to sweat a lot. Keep your distances really short at first-say a few hundred yards or so-this is a great excuse to take a short walk to the corner convenience store or a pal or the pool on the other side of the apartment complex, or maybe somewhere you need to go anyway, say the mailbox if you are out in the country and it is actually a little ways away. If you can do this without a lot of discomfort, rest a little and go back in a few minutes. If this is a trip you take on a regular basis, try walking a little faster each time until that, too, is easy. If you are really not phased by it anymore, you might even try jogging it slowly, or cutting down on your rest time in the middle, but make sure you drink your fluids if you find you get really wet doing even this little exercise. If it really drains you, though, just keep it slow, and even try it during a cooler part of the day and build up to hotter times once you feel you can do it without real discomfort. Don't try running this fast at first, or making some kind of a macho race of it if you aren't the exercising type-hospital stays aren't cheap, and neither are ambulance calls if you really overdo it and end up with a heat stroke, and this can be really fast in some parts of the US with our recent triple-digit temperatures. Most runners train by slowly starting off by just walking, and they become milers eventually-think of this as baby crawling to build up the "muscles" to learn to walk and run eventually. You will get there, believe me.

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