Long vacations are wonderful!
You get to travel the world, see old friends, meet to people, and just relax!!!
For many of us that means that we take a break from our daily routines and that means, we also take a break from exercise! This is totally normal and plenty of people do it. After all, working out is tough and you don’t wanna have Fran lung on vacation! That sounds stressful and you’re number 1 priority is to recover from your stressful daily routine.
The problem is, when you get back from your trip ya start to build up in your head all those times a workout put ya on the ground and stress takes over. That first workout becomes this big mountain to climb and decision anxiety takes over making ya less likely to hop back in the gym. If this anxiety builds too long, you won’t get in the gym and all those gains you made before taking your trip will take long and longer to get back as the weeks and sometimes months pile on!
So, what can you do?
Normalize Activity
Our bodies are really good at adapting. It’s what allowed our species to cover the whole planet!
We can take in stress to a certain degree and over time our bodies become used to it and crave it.
This can be overdone in the sense that when we aren’t working, some of us feel like we aren’t doing enough and feel like a lion is chasing us. Or it can be underdone where we feel underutilized and feel underwhelmed with our daily lives. So, we strive to find balance by aiming for our perfect day!
Since we are a mobile species, activity should be a part of that day! After all, exercise helps promote brain functions, reduces stress, and helps increase life expectancy!
On top of this, the workouts you do as part of our gym give you an excellent base to go explore your fitness! CrossFit was never designed to make athletes better at CrossFit. It was designed to help prepare you for life!
So, planning to do one active thing per day while on vacation can greatly help you work towards your goals without feeling like you’re going for a workout. Things like playing beach volleyball, going on hikes, learning how to axe throw, swimming, and all the other active outdoor activities that you can do on vacation are excellent ways to apply your fitness and reduce that fear of getting back to moving when you get home, because you’ll have been moving the whole time!
Start Slow or Rip The Bandaid? Both are awesome!
Let’s say that you didn’t do something active the whole vacation and that fear has built up? What then?
Remember this, “It is more important that you show up rather than crush that WOD!”
The first workout back hurts because we get conditioned to being sedentary and then we try to attack a workout with the same intensity before we left. Even CrossFit Games athletes have a prep week or two after their off seasons. Why? Because, that shock to the system SUCKS.
The best solution to getting going back into your workout routine after a long break is to just go in the gym the day or the day after you get back and move.
Not pick the hardest scale possible and try and burn every calorie possible. Rather, you should go in and view it as getting to hang out with your friends and just move for an hour!
What’s stressful about hanging with friends while doing an activity y’all like together? Nothing!
Just like a chiropractor saying wiggle your toes before they crack your neck, doing a workout with friends can help distract from the medicine and making the pain a thought that is just in the back of your mind.
After you take that first class, you’ll feel like you’re back at home. Tell your friends you’ll see them for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow’s WOD and your routine begins again!
Once you’re back in the groove, everything gets easier. If you’re having trouble getting back in the groove after a long 4th of July trip, go ahead and schedule your favorite class and text a friend or your coach that you’ll see them there! Then at that first class, don’t forget to sign up for an In-Body Scan (Here is the LINK) so we can get ya set up on your goals for the next 90 days.