Paul Morris spoke with Orsolya Nagyistok, Personal trainer, Pilates and BodyART instructor at Aspria, to find out more about holiday fitness tips. More and more people are taking holidays out of the summer season.
Is one of the main reasons to carry on training the fact that we come back from holiday not just fit but mentally sharp?
When we come back from from holiday there is nothing worse than facing the fact that it is time to start a self-punishing regime. We have to start working again, and usually we are returning from sunshine to different weather conditions, which is a shock for most of us. When this shock is accompanied by five extra kilos to lose, returning to reality is even harsher if you don’t practice a holiday fitness programme. All this together can be a source of holiday blues. To avoid this, it is better to simply maintain an easy way of exercising. We transition back to our working life more smoothly if we maintain some regularity during the holiday. It is also a great emotional help. Sometimes we need a little mental strength to think of exercising during a holiday, but it is worth overcoming laziness to avoid major regrets on returning.
Should we stick to the same exercises, the training we do in the gym?
Unfortunately it is challenging to have an effective workout while travelling. While many hotels offer their own fitness centres for their guests, sometimes this option is not available and we have difficulties finding a fitness centre nearby and adapting our holiday, or business trip schedule, to the opening hours of the facility. Due to this irregularity, we usually cannot stick to our regular gym exercises. In addition, the lack of know-how is often also an obstacle. In reality, all we need for an effective training is ourselves. Body weight exercises engage many muscles and help sculpt multiple areas simultaneously. Instead of using machines, what we can do while we travel is to have a full-body workout with nothing but the resistance of our body. The best thing we can do is to keep it simple and perform exercises based on different variations of planks, lunges, squats and pushups.
