Surely many of you are already thinking about the long awaited summer holidays : either on the beach or in the mountains, there are many who choose to continue training even in these days of rest. If you also want to keep fit on holiday we tell you what kind of lightweight and manageable material you can put in your suitcase to train wherever you are.

Running shoes and heart rate monitor

Do not miss! We who run do it anywhere; What’s more, leaving our city is usually an incentive to discover new routes and different places to wear your shoes. With a pair of shoes, your usual heart rate monitor and a pair of shorts and shirts you’ll have more than enough to keep training in your holiday destination.

A good idea is, before leaving on a trip, take a look at webs such as strava or wikiloc to see the routes you can take at your destination. In this way you can choose in advance those that best suit your physical condition and the training you want to do each day: more demanding in terms of rhythms, a long distance in which to enjoy the landscape …

Keep in mind especially the type of terrain where you are going to run to be able to choose the most appropriate shoes and, in the case of making long runs, it is also a good idea to bring the hydration backpack , especially if you do not know the area and you do not know if there are sources in the way.

The TRX to train with your body weight wherever you want

I have to say it’s one of the best fitness purchases I’ve made because it saved me a lot of workouts, both at home (especially if it’s very hot or cold and I’m too lazy to go to the gym) and on vacation.

The TRX is ideal, for example, to take a vacation on the beach : you only need a support to anchor it (I have done it many times in the games that are on the beaches for children, when there are no children, of course, well early) and you already have a full workout for the whole body.

In addition, the fact of training on the sand can help us to work proprioception and balance, being a more or less unstable element. In this article you have a complete routine to train with the TRX, and I recommend you to include some exercise with jumps (squats with jump assisted with the TRX, for example), that on the sand get a much more intense training than in other surfaces.

Elastic bands and a rope for a complete workout

If you do not have a TRX, another of the options that you have to work with are elastic rubber bands. These rubbers, available in several resistances and materials, are tremendously versatile and allow us to work all the large muscle groups adding a plus of intensity to the exercises with our body weight.

Combining elastic band training with calisthenics exercises can be a great idea: adding more intensity to a push-up is simple by holding the rubber band with both hands and passing it behind the back, for example. In addition, it is a material that does not weigh and does not occupy anything inside the suitcase: perfect to take anywhere.

If you want to continue training cardio on vacation but do not want to go for a run (or want to combine it with other exercises), a jump rope is ideal to take on a trip. A ten-minute jumping session without stopping and combining different styles (normal jumps, jumps on one leg, double jumps, jumps crossing the rope ahead …) is a demanding training that will test our heart, our lungs, the Musculature of our legs and our abdomen and also that of our shoulders. Also a training by intervals (for example: 15 x 50 seconds jumping + 10 seconds of rest) can be a good option to keep us in shape these days.

Gain intensity with a weighted vest or with weighted ankles

Another very versatile element to add intensity to our workouts with body weight is the ballasted vest, which does not take up too much space and fits anywhere. Earlier we talked about how to choose our perfect ballast vest, and you can use it in all the exercises you perform with your own body weight : push-ups, squats, jumping exercises, burpees …

The ballasts for ankles or wrists can also be useful if we go on a trip, especially when it comes to intensifying workouts focused on a certain muscle group. Ankle weights can help us work more intensely on the buttocks area, instead of doing it with our own weight, for example.

With all these options there are no excuses to not continue training even if we are on vacation : keeping fit, also on rest days, can be a great way to disconnect and discover new places.