My teenaged buddies liked sports and, like most kids, would try to get better at them. I thought that’s what I was trying to do too, but my best friend would often say otherwise.

He would say I was obsessed.

When the summertime pickup basketball games ended at the Temple pool and he’d jump in the water to get cool, I’d do shooting drills or talk somebody who just showed up into playing one-on-one.

Every now and then, I’d go home and run two or three miles. To make me and the run that much tougher, sometimes I’d wear my “Polish sweatsuit” - a plastic garbage bag with holes cut out for my head and arms.

Maybe my best friend was right.

Intensifying the summer heat like that wasn’t too smart. That general idea however, of exercising in the heat to improve how you feel and function in it is.

You’ll find proof of this in a study published online in August of 2010 by the Journal of Applied Physiology. In it, 12 “highly trained” cyclists did 10 consecutive days of heat adaptation workouts by riding for 90 minutes (with a 10-minute break in the middle) on stationary bikes in a climatic chamber set at 104 degrees and 30 percent humidity.

They rode at 50 percent of their maximum oxygen capacity (VO2 max).

According to material available through the National Council of Strength & Fitness, this approximates to about 70 percent of your maximum heart rate. If you’re in good shape, the effort feels fairly easy and creates no apparent changes in breathing.

Such a relatively easy degree of exercise intensity was chosen by the researchers because it isn’t hard enough to make highly trained cyclists better. That way, any changes between the pre- and posttests could be attributed to heat adaptation.

Another eight highly trained cyclists served as the control group. They trained for the same number of days, for the same amount of time, and at 50 percent of their VO2 max, but in a cool environment seen as ideal for optimal athletic performance.

For the control group, the temperature in the climatic chamber was set at 55.4 degrees and 30 percent humidity.

Within a week of the 10 days of training, both groups were retested in both hot and cool environments. As expected, the 12 who did the heat acclimation workouts performed better in a hot environment.

The power they produced at lactate threshold, which usually occurs when you exercise at 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, improved on average by 5 percent. The control group’s power at lactate threshold did not change from the pretest.

The time needed to complete a simulated time trial decreased an average of 8 percent for those who did the heat adaptation training. Again, the control group recorded no change.

The across-the-board improvements recorded by the 12 who did the heat acclimation workouts when tested in the cool environment, though, were unexpected. The average increases in lactate threshold and time trial performance again improved by 5 percent and 6 percent and once again the control group recorded no improvements.

While you may find all this intriguing, you may not a cyclist or a competitive one interested in improving performance. You should, however, want to function and feel better on those stinking hot, energy-draining days everyone complains about.

What can be surmised from the aforementioned research is that exercising in uncomfortably warm conditions will do just that after your body has a few days to acclimate. What your body learns to do, the researchers theorize, is increase skin temperature while keeping core body temperature lower than before.

Because of this, the sweat you now produce sooner does its job even better.

And you’re cooler. Not only while you work out, but also before and after.

Just be careful - very careful - if you alter your exercise program to incorporate the concept of heat acclimation training. Overdoing it could create heat exhaustion - and certain prior medical conditions and prescription medications make it that much easier to overdo it.

But consistent exercisers who are currently healthy should be able to handle a warmer-than-normal workout environment, and you can simply create one by working out at a warmer time of the day. Or you can work out at the same time but alter your course so less of it is in the shade.

If you lift in a relatively cool basement, bundle up. While a Polish sweatsuit may still be too extreme, a sweatshirt and ski cap are not.

But whatever you do, pay heed to your body. Lightheadedness, a headache, a feeling of nausea, subtle vision problems, and a far greater feeling of fatigue than normal are some of the signs you’re suffering from heat exhaustion.

If this occurs, stop exercising. Drink some water and pour a bit of it on your head.