How to stay fit on holiday if all you have is a hotel room and a suitcase
It's easier than it seems
Lifestyle
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A holiday usually means an escape from reality. A chance to shut down the laptop, switch off your mobile and relish in weeks of sun-soaked cocktails by the pool. But if you are feeling the urge to move your body – here's how you can stretch those legs without any of your usual equipment.
You’ve most likely spent months saving up for the trip. And working just as hard to look your sexiest in a swimsuit. Then suddenly you go on holiday and your workouts do too– just not to the same destination.
“I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they start to see fitness and exercise as a bit of a chore whilst away,” running and triathlon coach Josh Coldray from Coldray Endurance tells Body+Soul.
“It’s all of a sudden gone from their routine and their routine changes and it’s just like, they can’t really be bothered with it anymore.”
But while it’s great to have a break and put your gym membership on hold for a bit, can your body really afford to skip working out?
What happens when you suddenly stop exercising?
Firstly, and most importantly, you’re not going to feel all that great.
“If you’ve been training consistently up until the holiday, your body is used to releasing those endorphins,” Coldray says. “And then all of a sudden you stop releasing those endorphins.”
Add on the bar tabs and breakfast buffets, and all those late-night drinks and endless fry-ups can leave you feeling pretty lousy.
“You can get very clouded,” points out the PT, which explains that flat feeling you get after a few days on a deckchair. “So I’d say you want to continue to release those endorphins on holiday because your body is used to them.”
Just like it’s also used to being put through rigorous workouts.
“If you just stop strength training for two weeks, your muscles will start going backwards slightly,” warns Coldray. “It doesn’t take long at all.”
And while a post-holiday runner may be able to keep up the speed once they get back home, it’s bound to be a heck of a lot harder.
“In terms of running, if you go out for a run after taking a holiday, you could run at the same pace, but the perceived effort is just going to be that little bit harder,” Coldray says.
How to get a workout into your holiday itinerary
No gym? No problem, says Coldray who adds that exercising without weights and equipment is actually “a piece of cake”.
The most important step is not making it feel like a chore, because it is oh-so-easy to slip off the wagon when you’re out of your routine.
“You go off travelling and maybe the first two days you’re flying and then you get to the hotel and you’re a little jet lagged and tired and then you’re like five or seven days in and you haven’t done anything and your routine is out the window,” says Coldray.
“And then it’s just like, ‘Yeh, the first week’s been a bit rubbish, so I won’t bother’.”
The answer? Keep up a decent routine from the offset.
“It’s about fitting it in at times when it’s not going to be an effort,” the coach says. “So, for example, you could make a workout that you could do anywhere, like at a bus station or in a hotel lobby or at the airport, when you’re sitting around getting stiff and tight.
“It doesn’t even need to be a full workout. It could be a mobilisation exercise or focusing on breathwork. There’s so much you can do to stay mindful with your fitness and training whilst you’re travelling around so much.”
For the fitness expert, he breaks it down into four key sessions: Strength, cardio, mobility and breathwork.
#1. Strength training
“In terms of strength training when you’re on holiday, rather than getting stronger, it’s more about keeping everything firing and keeping everything activated,” says Coldray. “You don’t want to be spending 45 minutes working out because you’re on holiday, so make the workouts short and sweet to make it possible that you can do them anywhere.”
He recommends the below five exercises which only use a trusty cabin bag, water bottle and band.
“If you follow these exercises through and do three sets of each, you’re done in 20 minutes,” the PT explains. “It’s also nice to have small goals to accomplish each day as well.”
Banded step out
“Great to keep the glutes firing, especially after long plane rides where they get nice and stiff,” Coldray says, with the band around his legs, just above his knees.
“We are going to hinge at the hips and then from here I just want to balance on one leg to activate the glute and then I am just going to step out.”
Do that 12 times in each set.
Hamstring hold
“A lot of people are like, ‘I don’t have any equipment, how do I work my hamstrings?’, because usually you would do your deadlifts and your hamstring curls at the gym,” says Coldray.
So he recommends the hamstring hold.
“Drop down onto the floor, and we can do this with both legs or a single leg if you want to progress, but we want to try to get our leg out nice and straight from this position, and from this position my bum is on,” he explains, with his feet resting on top of the water bottle at the same time.
You want to aim to get to a 30-second hold on each leg.
Bulgarian split squat
Time to target quads and glutes and leave them firing.
Throw your bag on your back or hold it in your arms and place the top of one foot on a chair or a bed.
“So you want to be about leg distance away from the chair, the weight is in the heel, and just sit that bum back and down,” Coldray explains. “So get to 90 degrees and power out from there.”
Aim for about eight to 10 reps on each side.
Push-up or handstand hold
Upper body time.
“We can do this one from the wall, walking our legs all the way up for the handstand hold, or alternatively we are just going to put our feet up on the chair and we’re going to push through,” Coldray says, with his hands on the ground in a push-up position. “So I really think about tucking my chin in, really getting my chest through, getting that back nice and straight and getting a stretch through the hammies there as well.”
Aim to hold that for about 30 seconds.
V hold
The final exercise is one for the core.
“This is the best bang for buck core exercise you’re going to get,” claims the PT. “So I balance on my coccyx and then from this position I want to get as straight as I can. So I am going to kick out, point my toes, tense my core, and I want to get my rib cage in so I’m really tucking the abs there, and I’m just going to hold this.
“For this one, we can just go for three times max holds. It might be 10 seconds, it might be 20 seconds, whatever that is, we’re just going to try to progress it each time we do these sessions.”
#2. Cardio
Next up is cardio. Or as we like to think of it, speed sightseeing.
“It’s so much fun when you’re running around on holiday because you don’t know what’s going to be around every single corner,” says Coldray, who’s currently in India on a yoga teacher training course with his wife.
“Here we have a bit of fun with it and we’ll map out a route and be like, ‘Alright, let’s go to that temple there’, or, ‘Let’s visit that museum there and we can get a taxi back’. So you can almost use it as a form of transport and exploration.”
And you don’t even have to push yourself far or hard!
“Even if you just get out for a few easy and slow runs a couple of times a week, it just keeps that routine going and it’s going to make it so much easier on the other end,” explains Coldray, who’s been getting out for a handful of 5km adventures whilst in India. “It should just be about staying really present and using that time to see the sights and go for random runs.”
While if you do want to use the downtime to get your running fitness up (hey, you do you), the running coach has this secret tool.
“If you want to really stay in the moment, try to focus on nasal breathing which gets you into the flow state to stop your mind from wandering and help you to stay super present,” he says.
The technique, which involves breathing through your nose and trying to bypass your chest and instead use your diaphragm to fill up your lungs, is also known to increase circulating blood oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, slow the breathing rate and improve overall lung volumes.
“Holidays are a great time to try nasal breathing because you’re not going to be running as far, you’re going to be a bit more relaxed and a little bit slower. And if you can use your holiday to improve your nasal breathing, when you do get back home your running is going to be so much stronger because you've got that ability.”
#3. Mobility
Sitting on your bum on long-haul flights, waiting around in airport lounges and sleeping on dodgy mattresses are going to do nothing good for the spine, lower back or hamstrings.
That’s why mobility exercises are crucial. And they’re as easy as using your water bottle as a foam roller or bringing along a firm ball in your suitcase to help roll your calf, quad and hamstring to break the muscles down.
Or assuming the cat-cow yoga position (where you’re on all fours and arch your back up and down) to open up your thoracic spine, or child’s pose to really open up your shoulders.
“You want to try to maintain a bit of liquidity and stay loose and limber after the long haul flights or the long car rides or even the beds you sleep on,” Coldray says.
He adds that the following two exercises could be done in two minutes. “You do 30 seconds of one and 30 seconds of the other and then repeat.”
Frog squat
Just like a normal squat except like Kermit.
Feet are shoulder-width apart, toes are slightly turned out. And you drop it all the way down with your hands in a prayer pose. Then, with your elbows on your knees, stretch your legs up, pushing your hips into the air.
“That opens up your hips and your hamstrings, and you’re also getting a bit of blood moving while flushing out some lactic acid,” the coach says.
Bear crawls
Next up are bear crawls which is when you’re on your hands and feet and you crawl forward and back, really slow and controlled.
“The bear crawl is great because it gets every single joint in your body moving,” the coach says. “It gets your shoulders, wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and hips.”
You also don’t need much space for them, Coldray also points out.
“And if that is literally all you do for mobility whilst you are on holiday, you’ll probably come back more mobile than when you started.”
#4. Breathwork
“In everyday work life, one of the biggest mistakes we can make is breathing too fast,” Coldray explains.“Which causes stress, affects our emotions, and the way we react to situations. So if you can slow your breath down, then you’re going to be more present and calm and react better to situations."
Which can be pretty important when you’re tearing through airports because you’re late for your flight.
“Breath is such a powerful tool to calm everything down,” he adds. “It’s also great when you’re on the plane and you're just about to go to sleep and use a bit of breathwork technique to slow everything and again when you’re out exploring.”
The technique Coldray recommends is repeatedly inhaling through the left nostril for five seconds while closing the right, before exhaling over 10 seconds through the right nostril, closing the left, while breathing deeply into the belly.
“And you don’t need anything for that, you just need to block your nose” he says. “So you can do it anywhere.”
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Originally published as How to stay fit on holiday if all you have is a hotel room and a suitcase
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