It’s summer, the favorite season of almost every soul on this planet, except me (I’m an autumn girly, and I can’t wait for the crisp October mornings, but I digress). It’s also that time of year when most of us go on holiday and training stops being a priority, to say the least.
For some of us, it can be an anxious time too. We’ve been training hard for months to put on muscle, and of course we don’t want to lose it all over one week away. The good news is that maintaining muscle is much easier than building it. It only takes a fraction of the training volume needed to make new gains.
Research on detraining (the fancy word for what happens when you stop training) shows that most trained people maintain their muscle size for about two to three weeks before any measurable loss occurs. Strength sticks around even longer, often four weeks or more, because a big part of strength comes from your nervous system learning how to produce force. And thankfully, that doesn’t disappear after a long weekend or a vacation.
So if you’re away for a few weeks and you’d rather not work out, don’t. Enjoy your trip. Walk a lot, go for a swim, carry your own bags, stay generally active, and when you get home, pick up your usual program where you left off. I promise you’ll be just fine.
And if you want to keep training anyway, simply because you enjoy it and you like keeping your body moving, I made a program for you. It’s designed to replace your regular routine whenever you can’t make it to the gym, whether you’re on vacation, traveling for work, or simply don't have access to your usual equipment. It uses bodyweight and resistance bands only, so you don’t need to pack thirty five different accessories.
Hope it helps, and most importantly, enjoy your holidays. Rest, eat the foods you like, spend time with the people you love. Your little routine will be waiting for you when you come back.
The download link is at the end of this article ⬇️
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