away workout

[Liza]

Hi Cathe,

I am going on vacation in about 2 weeks for a week and I would like to prepare for a workout while I am there - for cardio - I know I will run either outside or in the health club on the treadmill, my question is for weights - what do you recommend, I usually do your tapes for weights but since a gym is available - do you have any suggestions? Also, should I write a routine for abs in advance or just wing it while I am there???

Thanks!

 

[Cathe Friedrich]

Hi Liza! Are you sure you want to work out so hard on your vacation ;-)!

One week is actually not a very long time to stray from a regular routine, so you could do minimal amounts of exercise while gone for that week and still be fine. Most of the time you'll find that you will feel bloated on vacation because of induging in special menu's (which you should on vacation). A few treadmill workouts will take care of this.

As for an ab routine, just wing it. Do a five minute routine consisting of tradional crunches, oblique crunches, and reverse crunches, then flip over and do a plank or two. That's all you need.

I don't know what your vacation gym will have. Many times vacation resort gyms are very limited. Again, you don't need a fancy routine here, just a leg extention machine, a hamstring curl machine, and some squats and lunges will be plenty leg conditioning.

For upper body you can do your basic bench press and incline bench press for chest (or push ups if you don't have access to that), for back one arm rows and a lat pull down machine, for shoulders you can do front raises, side lateral raises, and rear delt flys, for triceps you can do overhead extentions and kickbacks, and for biceps tradional curls and hammer curls.

You can split up these exercises to be upper body one day and lower the next or spend an hour and 15 minutes and do them all in one workout (this includes warm up and cool down too). You need no more than 2 sets of 10 for each exercise. Have a blast and remember to enjoy yourself, your workouts will be here for you when you return, should you change your mind !

 

[Liza]

Thanks Cathe,

I will pack this away in my suitcase and maybe just do some minimal stuff so I don't feel guilty for eating!!!!