Workout While on Vacation

If you make exercise a regular part of your daily routine it’s only natural that you’d want to continue to do so. However, use the occasion of getting away from home as an opportunity to change your exercise routine.

When you spend a lot of time exercising – at a gym, at home, distance running or biking – use vacation as a time to throw yourself a change up and do something different.  Our bodies adapt to stimulus quite easily, so to use a completely different exercise program for a week or two is a great way to avoid mental and physical training plateaus.

At the beach, leave your sneakers and distance running mentality at home, and do sprints and/or shuttle runs barefoot in the sand.  Throw in some calisthenics and you have an almost endless supply of vacation workout options.  If possible, take a pair of dumbbells or two, a Kettlebell or other piece of training gear and mix a few basic exercises in with sprint/agility drills on the sand, and you’ll probably get a better workout than you are used to.

The key is to stay out of the gym, whether you’re going to a rental house or resort, take a break from the indoor, traditional structured workouts whenever possible.  Certainly there’s nothing wrong with exercising while on vacation, and looking forward to doing so, but don’t let exercise dominate your plans while vacationing.

Taking time off from regular exercise when healthy is a good thing and in the long run helps progress and is important for recovery.  Time off from exercise because of an illness or injury does not offer the same benefits. If you don’t take a break from training a couple of times per year you’ll have a greater chance of suffering from overtraining syndrome, mental burn-out or injury, which sets you back.

Well-timed breaks from your regular exercise routine will not set you back, but will help you progress.  So next time you go on vacation, give your regular workout routine a vacation, as well.