Many people like to continue their training regime while away on holiday and as a result some hotels have
a fitness room available. However, if you would like to continue training but there are no facilities available,
here are some tips that you may find useful.
First of all, if you are going on a normal two week holiday, then the loss of fitness will range from none at
all to very little indeed. However, there is a psychological element that in some requires them to continue
to train. They can suffer a loss of confidence that is as important and will have the same effect as a real
loss of physical performance.
The first thing to do is to look at what is available. All hotels have an emergency stairwell and this can be
the first piece of training equipment.
Stair climbs can be used in two ways, firstly as an aerobic exercise. Divide the stairs into flights and climb
the stairs one step at a time. Run up and down one flight then up and down two flights and so on until you
get to the top floor. If you book into a skyscraper, stop after 30 minutes.
As a strength exercise, climb the stairs two or three steps at a time making sure you do not support your
legs with your hands.
There are a number of strategies that can be employed to maintain fitness when away from your normal
training environment. The first is proper preparation. In the last few days before travelling we would
recommend that you increase your training load by a factor of one and a half to three depending on how
much you feel you can cope with. The advantage of this is that you are then in a position to take a good
break of up to four to five days of complete rest. This serves two purposes. It allows you to settle into
your holiday and also allows your body to settle into the new time zone, eating habits and lifestyle without
adding the extra stresses of training. This four to five day break should also help prevent catching any
illness from the plane. Airplanes are notoriously unhealthy places, as there are hundreds of people in an
enclosed space breathing the same recycled air, often for hours at a time, so any infections are easily
transferred between people. A few days of complete rest should allow you to stave off these infections
and leave you healthy for the rest of your holiday.
After your four to five days of complete rest it is time to start training. The focus of this training is not to
improve your strength, CV fitness or anaerobic threshold, rather to simply keep your body ticking over and
not losing any fitness. There are three sessions set out below. Choose the one that is most suited to you
or rotate between them to give some variety.
