With a month away from any regular gyms I’ve had to come up with a plan so that I don’t turn into a complete slob while traveling and since I’m sure a lot of people are in the same boat over Christmas I’ll throw this up here.
In essence I’ll be living out of a backpack for the month so I’ve had to reduce my program to a handful of light items that I can carry with me and still get a good workout.
Therefore I’ve gone for a set of portable rings for upper body and core, a gymboss timer for running intervals and my back pack for some leg workouts.
Introduction
I’ve been running my business now for just over 5 years and working fulltime for the last 8 and in all that time I’ve never had a chance to take a proper holiday!
This Christmas though common sense has prevailed and I’m off overseas for 4 weeks in Thailand and Burma.
Naturally I realized that I’m not going to be able to maintain a heavy schedule of training while I’m away (which would kind of defeat the purpose of having a holiday anyway!) but at the same time I don’t want to turn into a complete slob so I’ve devised a simple plan that will hopefully achieve the following goals.
- Maintain a reasonable level of basic fitness so that my return to full training in mid January is less traumatic.
- Allow a few aches and niggles to recover ready for a big year of training.
- Work on a few weak spots like my upper body strength if possible
- Allow plenty of time to check out Thailand and Burma
- Not get me killed by the girlfriend because I’m spending all day in the gym!
The plan
My plan for the next 4 weeks revolves around the following elements
- Ring training for my upper body and core
- interval training with a Gymboss trainer, bodyweight exercises and runners
- Adding a couple of sandbags to my back pack and using it for basic weight training exercises.
- Visiting a gym 1-2 times a week if there is one available wherever I am and doing some light to moderate barbell and dumbbell workouts to stay in the groove.
I’m going to keep all the workouts short and intense to keep plenty of time for relaxing and sight seeing and plan to do something 4-5 days a week.
The workouts I’ve described below should give you a few ideas for how you can keep your training plan on track over the holiday season
Remember that the best thing you can do is commit to doing something most days and then use whatever is at hand to stay fit. Holidays are a great time to switch up your training with beach runs, surf swims, hiking etc and most holiday destinations provide new terrain that will challenge you. If you are traveling by car remember that a kettlebell takes up very little space and allows for a huge number of workouts.
I’ll be taking advantage of whatever pops up in Thailand, whether its beach sprints, swimming or taking a Muay Thai class at local gyms (even if I get killed by the conditioning workouts!)
In order to mix things up I’m going to write up the following workouts on some index cards then just pull one out at random and perform it. Next time I want to train I’ll do the same thing so that the workouts are pretty unpredictable!
Workout 1
21, 15, 9 reps
Ring pull-ups
Back pack thrusters
Situps
Workout 2
Max rounds in 20:00
5 ring dips
10 pushups
15 situps
20 unweighted squats
Workout 3
Sprints
10 rounds
30 second sprint – max effort
60 second recovery
Workout 4
Anaerobic intervals
6 rounds
Run 2:00
Walk 1:00
Workout 5
7 rounds for time
5 back pack snatch
5 back pack shoulder and lunge each side
15 ring pushups
20 situps
Workout 6
Tabatas
8 rounds of 20 seconds work / 10 seconds rest of each of the following exercises.
ring pull-ups
pushups
squats
situps
Workout 7
Beach workout if available
Unstructured run and swim
Run for 1-2 minutes along beach
Swim 1-2 minutes
Repeat 5-8 times
Conclusion
I’ve deliberately avoided structuring numbers of workouts a week and alternating strength and conditioning sessions because to be honest I’ve got no idea what I’ll be up to at each point in my holiday and I want my fitness work to be flexible and work around all the cool stuff I’ll be doing.