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THE DAYS ARE GETTING LONGER.

That yellow thing in the sky is the sun, and it’s around longer and more often. Time to locate shorts and your tank tops. Spring is in full swing, with summer soon to follow. And it’s the season to think about how your body is going to look after you’ve stripped off all that heavy winter clothing. For those living in the northern climates, staying in any kind of good shape during the winter can be problematic. Witness the complaint of one bodybuilder: “I get up when it’s dark and cold, bundle up in cold weather gear, go outside and dig out my car from the snow, scrape ice off the windows, drive to the gym, try to find a clear parking space, go inside and change into my workout clothes for training. A lot of time and effort, and not much fun.” Added to that, when your body is all covered up and people can’t see it, there’s less incentive to stay on a diet—and it’s a lot harder to regulate your caloric intake when the weather is cold.

After all who wants to diet over the holidays, anyway? Thanksgiving and Christmas aren’t ideal times to pay strict attention to what and how much you eat. So, as you get ready for summer and start a warm weather conditioning program, you might have a lot of catching up to do. But the strategy you need is one that won’t surprise you. To build, shape, and firm up your muscles, you need to hit the gym with serious, effective, and consistent workouts. If you’ve been slacking off during the winter, be careful to ease back into intense workouts gradually. It can take a few weeks or even a month or two before your muscle memory takes over and you see much in the way of results. Pushing yourself too far and too fast risks injury, and that can end up setting you back many months.

Getting lean and mean— increasing your definition and muscularity—means that all-too-familiar word: diet. You need to eat clean, but you won’t achieve your goals without cutting back on your caloric intake. Of course, cardio exercise helps to burn calories, and in good weather, you can go outside to walk, run, bike, or swim to help shed stored body fat. It may be that you’ve been training hard all winter long so your main focus will mostly need to be diet. As with anything else in bodybuilding, your goals and your strategy for achieving them are an individual matter. You identify and solve your particular problems; you determine your weaknesses and attack them. But all the effort needed does seem a heck of a lot easier when you’re waking up to a glorious summer sun instead of a gloomy winter day.