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A summer holiday is a good motivator to get yourself to the gym. You want to look your best by the pool, sipping cocktails with the confidence of your great physique, so you start a 3 month exercise programme and it goes really well. You land at your sunny destination and you're ready to show off the hard work you've been putting into the gym. But what's next, you get back home, and that's it? You're done in the gym until you book your next holiday? But what about all that hard work you put in, you're going to let it all go?
In this post, we are going to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of not exercising on holiday, what you can do to keep yourself active and how you can make the right choices to avoid losing your progress. But most importantly, how to do all this and relax at the same time.
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The advantages of taking rest on holiday
When you're on the sunny beaches of Spain, you don't want to worry about your next gym session, or how many steps you've done in the day, and sometimes, an extended period of recovery can actually enhance your progress. When you train, it isn't actually the exercise that makes you lose weight or gain muscle, its the recovery process afterwards. Without adequate recovery, your body will not make the progress you are looking for. Depending on your experience, frequent periods of extended rest, 2-5 days, can actually catalyse your progress, not reverse it.
As well as physiological, extended rest periods can enhance psychological recovery, which can improve your training performance when you get back from holiday. Stress is a very real factor that effects exercise and health. Resting and relaxing on holiday, taking time away from exercise, work and the normal difficulties in every day life, can hugely reduce stress, which is shown to improve sleep, exercise, mental health and improve metabolic function (muscle growth, digestion).
So don't force yourself to the gym while your away to avoid the feeling of 'non-exercise guilt'. If you've put the work in before your holiday, you deserve, and likely need, an extended recovery period.
Disadvantages of not exercising on holiday
Whilst 2-5 days of extended rest can be beneficial to us both physiologically and psychologically, most of our holidays last 7-14 days, if not more. For longer holidays like this, it is important to recognise some of the implications not exercising can have on our bodies.
Increased blood pressure - Your blood pressure will naturally e higher on a day you don't exercise than when you do, which is completely normal. But weeks without exercise can trick your body into thinking this elevated blood pressure is normal, which can lead to more long term risks of higher blood pressure
Spikes in blood sugar levels - Days without exercise can lead to increases in blood sugar levels because your body has nowhere to store extra sugar in the blood. In the short term, this can lead to dehydration, but long term effects include risk of diabetes and decreased insulin resistance.
Decrease in VO2 max - VO2 max is your capacity to inhale oxygen. 2 weeks without exercise can lead to a decrease in VO2 max by up to 20%.
What can you do to keep your progress when your on holiday?
So how can you make sure this doesn't happen to you. Well you could stick to your exercise plan, hitting the gym 2-3 times a week and managing your calorie goal every day., but your on holiday, you don't want to be worrying about that every day. So instead it's about making the right choices when you can.
Exercise on holiday
You may be fortunate enough to have a state of the art gym on your holiday complex, but from my experience, hotel gyms have 2 pairs of dumbbells, a cross-trainer and a resistance band, not exactly the most versatile equipment in the gym. So what can you do with this kit. Well if your lucky enough to have a pair of dumbbells and a bench, you can train anything you need to keep yourself active. Think about increasing the total volume of a workout if the weights available are limited.
Dumbbell only full body holiday workout...
Goblet squats 4x15-20
Dumbbell reverse lunges 3x16-20
Dumbbell RDL's 3x12-15
Dumbbell bent over row 3x12-15
Dumbbell shoulder press 3x10-12
Dumbbell chest press 3x10-15
Dumbbell bicep curl 2x10-12
Dumbbell skull-crusher 2x10-12
Sometimes we aren't blessed with access to dumbbells, but you can still manage an effective workout without any weights at all! Think about reducing rest times with bodyweight sessions, as you're not loading the muscle with extra resistance, you likely won't need extra long rest. An advantage of bodyweight exercises is that you can do them anywhere!
Bodyweight only full body holiday workout...
Bodyweight squats 4x15-20
Bodyweight lunges 3x20-24
Glute bridges/Hip thrusts 3x12-15
Push up/Kneeling push ups 3x max reps
Pull Ups/Assisted pull ups 3x max reps
Pike push ups 3x8-12
If you just don't have access to any facility to complete these workouts, all hope is not lost. Steps and cardio can be the most important element of maintaining weight loss when on holiday. Often we don't even think about how much walking we've done when we're on holiday, and sometimes it can be more than when your at home! Managing your steps and choosing active activities, like cycling and swimming, can be the difference between losing all your progress and sustaining the results you got from all your hard work over spring.
So to conclude this section, keep movement in the back of your mind. Have you been lounging by the pool all morning, maybe walk a little bit further to grab your lunch on that day. Or is there a gym facility at your complex? Tr it out, even if its once or twice, 2 gym sessions in a week is enough to sustain muscle mass.
How can you manage your diet when your on holiday?
Okay so this is the tough bit. You are on an all inclusive holiday in the beautiful Maldives, you would be insane not to enjoy yourself by eating all the great food that is available to you! The tip with managing your diet when on holiday is not to put put all your calories into MyFitnessPal every day, but instead, use a less intense approach to make sure you can still enjoy yourself.
When it comes to how much food you eat, relate it to how active you've been during the day. You don't have to be super accurate with your calorie tracking, but eating a little bit less on days you know your going to be by the pool most the day, could be the difference between managing and gaining weight. Genuinely that's it. That's the advice. You are still accountable for what you eat. I'm not telling you to eat nothing, but understand that if you eat a lot, you will gain weight, which ultimately, you can be lost when your back home anyway. But don't expect to magically maintain your progress if you don't make the right choices where you can.
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