Sport5 November 2026 · 5 min read
How to keep exercising through a dark Northern European winter
Seven and a half hours of daylight, sideways drizzle and a very good sofa. Seven ways to keep moving anyway.
Hamburg on the shortest day of the year: about seven and a half hours of daylight. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht don’t get much more. You leave for work in the dark, come home in the dark, and in between it drizzles sideways.
No wonder the running shoes are gathering dust by mid-November. Here’s how to keep moving anyway.
Why winter makes it so hard
- It’s dark. Your body reads darkness as “time to wind down”, not “time for intervals”.
- It’s cold and wet. The first five minutes outside are miserable, and you know it before you’ve even opened the door.
- The sofa is very good. Candles, tea, a series. Gezellig and gemütlich are serious competition.
- December is full. Work deadlines, drinks, family, travel. Your routine gets squeezed from every side.
Why it’s worth it anyway
Moving helps your mood, and winter is exactly when many people need that. A large review of randomised trials (Noetel and colleagues, 2024) found that walking or jogging, yoga and strength training reduced symptoms of depression, though the authors rated the certainty of the evidence as low. Exercise isn’t a replacement for treatment: if the winter feels like more than the blues, talk to your doctor.
7 ways to keep going through winter
1. Move your training into the light
If you can, train at lunchtime or straight after work while there’s still a bit of daylight on weekends. A 30-minute lunch run or a brisk walk around the block counts. Daylight feels better, and you don’t need a headlamp.
2. Showing up counts
Your winter goal doesn’t have to be your summer goal. Make the minimum tiny, like 20 minutes or one lap of the park, and give yourself full credit for it. Most days, once you’re out, you’ll do more. On the days you don’t, you still kept the habit alive.
3. Get ready the night before
Clothes on the chair, shoes by the door, gym bag packed, alarm set. Every decision you make in the evening is one you don’t have to make at 6:45 in the dark.
4. Dress for it
The Scandinavian saying goes: there’s no bad weather, only the wrong clothes. Layers you can take off, gloves, a hat, and something bright or reflective so cyclists and cars can see you. You’ll be cold for five minutes and fine after that.
5. Have a plan B indoors
Storm, ice, sideways rain? Decide in advance what replaces your outdoor session: the gym, the swimming pool, a bouldering hall, a 20-minute workout in the living room. An if-then plan (“If it’s icy, then I go to the pool instead”) clearly improves follow-through (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006), and it saves you from deciding while you look out of a dark window.
6. Pair it with something nice
The podcast you only listen to while running. The sauna after the swim. The hot chocolate after the Sunday walk. Pairing a “should” with a “want” (temptation bundling) got people to the gym more often in an experiment by Milkman and colleagues (2014).
7. Train with someone who’s expecting you
On a dark morning, “I don’t feel like it” wins easily. “Lena is waiting at the corner” doesn’t. A meta-analysis on social influence and exercise (Carron, Hausenblas and Mack, 1996) found a small to moderate positive effect of support from others, including the people you exercise with. And in lab studies on the Köhler effect (Feltz, Kerr and Irwin, 2011), people kept exercising longer with a slightly stronger partner than alone.
Make a winter plan together
If you have a training partner, sit down for ten minutes and agree on your winter version: two fixed sessions a week, your plan B for bad weather, your minimum for busy weeks, and how you’ll check in when you train apart. Our weekly check-in formats give you a few easy options.
No buddy yet? Pactful pairs you by hand with someone who has a similar goal and a similar schedule, ideally close by. We’re starting in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht.
Join the waitlist. Spring will thank you.
Sources
We checked these sources ourselves. Where a study is small or not peer-reviewed, we say so.
- Noetel, M., Sanders, T., Gallardo-Gómez, D., et al. (2024). Effect of exercise for depression: Systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 384, e075847. doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2023-075847The authors rate the certainty of the evidence as low.
- Carron, A. V., Hausenblas, H. A., & Mack, D. (1996). Social influence and exercise: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 18(1), 1–16. doi.org/10.1123/jsep.18.1.1
- Feltz, D. L., Kerr, N. L., & Irwin, B. C. (2011). Buddy up: The Köhler effect applied to health games. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 33(4), 506–526.
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
- Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. M. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299. doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784