I got away on vacation with Christina last week in Costa Rica. It’s the first time we were away without kids for seven days since 2009 and we really enjoyed our time together. The whole back story on how I planned with trip will be in a future article. As for this post I want to touch briefly on how I trained while on vacation. The cool part is training is something we each enjoy so we actually trained every day! This is what it looked like…
We rotated through the following schedule:
Day 1: Chest, Shoulders, Triceps, Abs
Day 2: Back, Biceps, Abs
Day 3: Legs, Abs
Day 4: Repeat schedule from Day 1
Before you freak out about this much training on a vacation we opted for frequency over lengthy training sessions. This means we woke up, drank some coffee on our patio while eating Biotest FINiBARS and then walked to the resorts ill-equipped gym.
Stretching
We began with about 10-15 minutes of stretching and foam rolling because we both have bad lower backs, lol.
Workout
The workouts then consisted of about 3 sets of 3 exercises for major body parts like chest, back and legs. Shoulders included 2 exercises and 3 sets each. Biceps and triceps included 1 exercise and 3 sets. Reps remained in the 10-20 range and I always stopped short of failure. The total workout concluded in 30 minutes. I threw in an ab exercise between just about every set throughout the workout.
Total Time/Conclusion
This meant the total time between stretching and training was no longer than 45 minutes and then we were off to breakfast. It was just the amount of time to loosen up my lower back, get a pump and work up a brief sweat.
I personally think if you’re an avid lifter that you need not stop training completely while on vacation, yet at the same time avoid getting sore and worn out. Even if I didn’t have equipment, there are things that you can do with bodyweight and/or Elitefts bands available here: https://www.elitefts.com/shop/bars-weights/bands.html.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFM2IxvJEM]