Don’t Lose Progress During Vacation With This Travel Workout
Summer is here and that means one thing: It’s time for a vacation! Yay!!
We all need a break from work, but …
What’s going to happen to your workout routine?
If you’re not sure how to answer that question, I’ve got some good news and some bad news (plus — spoiler — an awesome travel workout for you to try!). What do you want first?
(Let’s get the bad news out of the way.)
The Bad News
Taking a break from exercise can lead to some pretty dramatic decreases in your fitness. In fact, in one study participants actually lost 7 percent of their aerobic capacity after going just 12 days without training.
Yikes! That’s not encouraging!
The Good News
While it might be depressing to learn that a short break from your normal exercise schedule will cause your body to backslide, it’s important to know that it’s not hard to prevent that from happening.
Another study worked with physically fit participants and had them follow a regimented exercise schedule for the 32 weeks. What do you think happened?
Yes, they all got in even better shape!
But then the researchers made one tiny change: They abruptly cut the participants’ workout schedule to just a single exercise session per week. The research team enforced this rule for the following 16 weeks.
Now what do you think happened?
I know my initial thought was, “One workout isn’t going to save them. They’re going to lose all that progress!”
After 16 weeks the researchers re-tested the participants and concluded that their fitness improvements from the first 32 weeks were “largely maintained” even though they had been barely exercising at all!
A Travel Workout For Your Next Vacation
So we know that skipping workouts while on vacation can lead to lost fitness progress, BUT we also know that we can maintain our progress with very little effort.
The next question: What sort of workout can I do while traveling?
Watch this video below to see the travel workout I’ve put together for you to try. It’s designed to target all of your major muscle groups while also firing up your heart rate (aka major fat burning!), and all you need for it is a towel, T-shirt and chair.
Here’s what I’d recommend for this workout: Perform all six exercises in a circuit with no breaks between exercises. After completing the full circuit, take a 1-minute break, then repeat the circuit again, and again (so you’re doing three circuits in total).
- Alternating 1-Arm Burpees x 40 (20 per arm)
- T-Shirt Overhead Squat x 40
- T-Shirt Row x 20
- Dynamic Chair Dips x 20
- Towel Hamstring Curls x 20
- Bulgarian Split Squat Push-Ups x 5 per leg (3 squats + 2 push-ups for each rep)
The entire travel workout will take less than 20 minutes, so let’s get it done! —Dave
Dave Smith is a professional fitness and weight-loss coach who was chosen as “Canada’s Top Fitness Professional” in 2013. He shares awesome health and weight-loss tips through his blog and podcast that you can find at makeyourbodywork.com.