Getting Back Into Spring Sport in Winnipeg: What Your Body Actually Needs
Spring in Winnipeg Hits Different — Especially on Your Body
There’s a particular kind of energy that shows up in Winnipeg around late March. The snow is retreating (slowly, reluctantly), the sun is actually doing something again, and suddenly everyone wants to run, bike, play pickup basketball, or just move their body in a way that doesn’t involve a treadmill.
That energy is real and worth leaning into. But it also tends to produce a predictable wave of overuse injuries — sore knees, tight Achilles tendons, inflamed hip flexors, angry lower backs — in people who were otherwise totally fine all winter. Understanding why that happens can make the difference between a strong active season and spending April on the couch with an ice pack.
The Honest Reason Spring Injuries Happen
It’s not that running or cycling or playing sports is dangerous. The issue is almost always the same: doing too much, too soon, after a period of doing less.
Sports scientist Tim Gabbett framed this clearly in a landmark 2016 paper: the body adapts to load over time, and problems arise when the load you put on it spikes faster than the tissue can adapt.1 He described this through what’s now called the acute:chronic workload ratio — essentially, the gap between what you’re doing this week and what your body has been consistently doing over the past several weeks. When that gap gets large, injury risk climbs. When it stays reasonable, the body handles a lot.
What this means practically: if you haven’t been running since October and you head out for five kilometres on the first warm Tuesday in March, your cardiovascular system will probably keep up fine. It’s your tendons, cartilage, and the small stabilizing muscles around your joints that haven’t been specifically prepared. Those tissues adapt more slowly than your aerobic fitness does — and they don’t always give you warning signs before something goes wrong.2
What Winter Actually Does (and Doesn’t) Do
A Winnipeg winter doesn’t make you fragile. Most people maintain a reasonable level of general fitness through the cold months — shovelling, walking, gym work, skating, whatever it is. But there’s usually a meaningful drop in activity specificity. The connective tissue around your knees doesn’t get the same progressive loading from a stationary bike that it gets from running. Your hip abductors don’t work the same way on a treadmill as they do on uneven outdoor terrain.
Research on running-related injuries consistently points to abrupt spikes in weekly mileage or training volume as the primary culprit — more so than any particular biomechanical quirk or footwear choice.3 The same principle extends to field sports, cycling, and recreational activities: it’s the rate of change that matters most, not the activity itself.
A Few Things That Actually Help
There’s no single right way to ease back into spring activity, but some principles tend to hold up well across different sports and fitness levels.
Give your first two weeks less credit than they deserve. The first sessions back always feel manageable — often deceptively easy. That’s partly because motivation is high and partly because delayed onset soreness doesn’t always show up until 24–48 hours later. The tissues that take the most time to adapt (tendons, in particular) may not signal any problem until well after the damage accumulates.4
Treat warm-up as actual preparation, not ritual. Dynamic movement before activity — leg swings, hip circles, a light jog before a harder run — genuinely increases tissue temperature, improves range of motion, and reduces injury risk compared to going straight into full effort.5 It doesn’t need to be elaborate. Five focused minutes beats twenty distracted ones.
Pay attention to asymmetry. One knee that’s stiffer than the other after a run, or one hip that’s tighter after a skate — these aren’t always minor annoyances. They’re often the earliest signals that load is accumulating unevenly, and they’re worth addressing before they turn into something more persistent.
Don’t skip the recovery side. Sleep, nutrition, and rest days aren’t optional extras — they’re when the adaptation actually happens. Piling on consecutive hard days without recovery is one of the most reliable ways to accumulate overuse injuries.
There Are No Bad Activities — Only Bad Ramp-Ups
This is something worth saying plainly: there are no inherently dangerous sports or exercises for most people. The body is remarkably adaptable when given enough time and progressive challenge. What creates problems isn’t the activity — it’s the gap between what you’ve been doing and what you suddenly ask your body to do.
If something is bothering you as you get back into your spring routine — persistent joint pain, recurring muscle tightness that doesn’t resolve with a day of rest, or movement patterns that feel off — it’s usually worth getting eyes on it early. Small issues caught at that stage tend to resolve much faster than the same problems three months in.
The Boreal team sees a lot of spring presentations exactly like this, and the good news is that most of them respond well with some load management and a bit of hands-on work.
Spring is coming. Move well.
References
Gabbett TJ. The training–injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(5):273–280.
Cook JL, Purdam CR. Is tendon pathology a continuum? A pathology model to explain the clinical presentation of load-induced tendinopathy. Br J Sports Med. 2009;43(6):409–416.
Nielsen RØ, Buist I, Sørensen H, Lind M, Rasmussen S. Training errors and running related injuries: a systematic review. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2012;7(1):58–75.
Magnusson SP, Langberg H, Kjaer M. The pathogenesis of tendinopathy: balancing the response to loading. Nat Rev Rheumatol. 2010;6(5):262–268.
McGowan CJ, Pyne DB, Thompson KG, Rattray B. Warm-up strategies for sport and exercise: mechanisms and applications. Sports Med. 2015;45(11):1523–1546.