Glendora's Blog

By Gina M. Crome, M.S. ACE Certified Personal Trainer

Summer often presents a difficult time of year to maintain a fitness regimen. Much of the difficulty appears to be in maintaining a routine. Between trying to keep the kids entertained on their summer breaks and planning the family vacations, fitness often gets pushed to the proverbial back burner. Towards the end of summer when the children return to school and we are a few pounds heavier from vacation, it is then that we begin to look at getting back into our fitness routine. The good news is that physical activity doesn’t necessarily have to be elaborate during busy times nor does it have to be restricted to the comforts of home or a local gym.

It’s All In The Planning

Often times we plan our activities based on where we are going to eat or what we are going to see. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with this logic, we must also consider one additional factor which is how much are we going to move. Staying fit when traveling requires regular activity combined with a bit of planning. Consider activity as part of your recreational planning. Look for ways that the entire family can get involved such as family day at a local park or an early evening after-dinner hike. If heat is a factor, consider utilizing the services offered in your city through your local parks and recreational departments such as public pools and organized group trips to various places of interest. Vacations at larger hotels often times offer both accommodations as well as sight seeing activity packages. They usually refer to packages that involve more activity with names like “adventure.” These excursions can present unique opportunities for activities that can compliment a current fitness routine as well as provide enjoyment for everyone in your party.

Send Your Fitness Packing

Packing for your fitness-minded vacation can be a snap. A workout outfit and a sturdy pair of sneakers can provide the basics of your travel gear but don’t stop there. Other must have items to pack would include: a refillable water bottle, sunscreen, healthy snacks such as protein bars, fruit, beef jerky, and 100-calorie snack packs (for times when only gas station stops or vending machine food is available). Most hotels have a fitness center, some are more elaborate than others. It pays to call ahead to find out what they offer and if there are additional fees to utilize the facility. If your hotel doesn’t offer a fitness facility or you choose not to use it, you can get a great workout with just a few extra packing items such as a jump rope and an exercise tube or resistance band.

Work With What You Have

You’re in your hotel room and you forgot to bring anything even remotely related to fitness and there’s no hotel gym anyway. What do you do? The answer is work with what you have. Any fitness professional will tell you that the best fitness routine will contain 3 elements: 1.) Cardiovascular Activity, 2.) Strength Training and 3.) Flexibility. It’s possible to get all three of these critical components on vacation even without a gym or equipment. Perhaps the easiest way to get in cardiovascular activity is through walking. This can be done in tandem with sightseeing through walking tours, etc. or as dedicated exercise. Often times walking the surrounding area of a hotel (provided it’s in a safer neighborhood), can offer the weary traveler a chance to stretch their legs, get some fresh air, and take in different scenery. If you don’t want to leave the comforts of your hotel but want to get a really good cardio workout, try the stairs. Moving as quickly as you can through the flights of stairs can be intense, so it’s important to pace yourself. If you can’t step away from the free HBO in your room, you can try jogging in place or simple callisthenic-type exercises like jumping jacks. Both will ensure you of an elevated heart rate. The notion of strength training conjures up images of pumping iron in a gym environment. The truth is that in order for strength training to occur, one must exert force against a muscle or group of muscles done in a repetitive fashion until fatigue. Strength training doesn’t necessarily have to involve dumbbells, barbells, or any sort of gym equipment. Simple things found in your room can easily double as dumbbells such as filled water bottles or other equally weighted small items. Using your own body weight as resistance is often times the easiest way to achieve results in the absence of any equipment. Standard lower body exercises such as lunges and squats using only your body weight can prove very effective for this purpose. Standard upper body exercises such as push ups either against a wall or the floor as well as dips using a chair or bed are also great ways to get in a few resistance type exercises to work both your upper back as well as arms. Abdominal exercises are also super easy to accomplish with the help of a few curl ups as well as alternating leg scissors.

Flexibility is the third critical component in a good fitness program. It’s often overlooked many times because people don’t realize the benefit of flexibility. However, flexibility is important because it decreases the likelihood of injury and enhances the work that we do on the other two components. It involves stretching after a warm up or post-workout so as to ensure you don’t stretch a “cold” muscle. Stretches for all major muscle groups should be done and held for a period of 10-15 seconds. Your stretch should be held at a consistent mild tension without any bouncing motions. By incorporating these three exercise elements into the travel plans, your vacation can be a great place to either jumpstart a fitness routine or provide you with a unique opportunity to continue with good habits you’ve already established. If we allow ourselves a bit of creativity in our program as well as some pre-planning, we will be thankful for it when we return home to find that we didn’t gain that “vacation weight” and that we challenged ourselves with new exercises.

Gina M. Crome, M.S., is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer with a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology and the owner of Lifestyle Management Solutions, a Glendora, California based company that provides both personal training as well as weight management support services. She can be contacted a www.ginacrome.com.