Essential holiday workout tips

With summer in full swing and all those fabulous holidays booked, fitness centre Embody Fitness in Dubai has outlined six essential tips to maintain your fitness goals. This will ensure that your jet set lifestyle doesn’t affect your physique with some simple suggestions for your holiday work out. After working so hard to get your guns out when the sun’s out, don’t let go of your routine during the jam packed summer holidays. Rob Richards, Head Trainer of Embody Fitness with over 25 years of experience in the field as a strength and conditioning coach, outlines easy work out tips to help you keep in shape while you travel from coast to coast, making sure you shine in the sand this summer.

1. Do You Need to Workout?
The first question to ask yourself with holiday workouts is do you need to workout? If you’re only going away for a few days then you probably don’t need to make any workout plans, but if you’re going away for longer it might be a good time to get creative with your fitness, and put a plan in place. For example, you could plan to train really hard for the four weeks before your holiday and then take the time off as a planned rest week.

2. Do the Other Stuff
What is the other stuff? The other stuff is ‘the stuff’ that you always should do but don’t. A great example of this is stretching and holiday is a great opportunity to dedicate some time to really stretch out your muscles. This helps working on your mobility and also on core strength and stability. To get in a good stretch you don’t need a gym, so you can spend your energy focusing on those neglected areas, which can in return bring on some amazing results.

3. Start Moving Your Body
No gym – no problem. Bodyweight workouts are a great solution if you don’t have access to a gym while on holiday and also provide great results. You can do bodyweight circuits almost anywhere and keep in shape. Think squats, planks, sit ups, push ups, and pull ups. These are all low tech exercises but are high in reward.

4. Slow It Down
Slow it down and focus on the movement. For example if you find yourself in a hotel with a basic gym and no heavy weights - no issue here. Instead you can just vary the speed of the movements to still generate strong results. Try a bench press with 5 sec up and 5 sec down, or do a bicep curl 10 sec up and 10 sec down. For this you don’t need much weight to get the desired results and you can also work on perfecting your technique.

5. Try Something New
If you find yourself on holiday with no gym in sight – get creative and try something new. Go on a bike ride, or hop on the beach for a quick game of volleyball, grab a partner and play some tennis or even go swimming, jump in the pool and do some laps. Think of something you don’t normally do in your day to day work out regime and you’re bound to feel some ‘new’ muscles.

6. Go Big But Not Often
If your away for a long time and feel your losing those hard earned muscles then you can always find a local gym and do two maintenance sessions a week. These are not designed to break any records but just to keep you in the groove and to keep your fitness levels up. If you can fit in two full body workouts a week that should keep you on track even if you are away for a long period of time and will help you keep that body in shape.
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