How I’m Bringing Hybrid Training To My Vacations
They aren’t that complicated
During vacations, it’s easy to stop exercising and enjoy ourselves because we think we deserve it. To some extent we do, but what if you’re someone who loves to exercise but you may not always have the right equipment or be in the best situation to get your workout in?
Especially since December has the Christmas celebrations going on along with the New Year celebrations, it’s a season where everyone’s focus isn’t really on working out or being in shape.
But if you have as little as 30 minutes a day and you have sufficient space wherever you’re at, you can easily get a workout in.
As a hybrid athlete myself, I’ve been incorporating bodybuilding types of workouts, along with weighted calisthenics and runs into my weekly workout regime.
Not only have I gotten fitter, stronger, and more mobile, but I definitely looked the best I’ve ever looked in my life.
There are always options to get in a quick 30-minute workout such that you don’t need much time and equipment and you can even continue to make gains along the way.
Here’s how.
My Experience With Hybrid Training
In the past couple of months, I’ve been incorporating hybrid training into my weekly workout regime.
Since the goal is to become stronger and be able to build my aerobic base to run longer, the weekly workout regime basically consists of 2 runs and 2–3 strength workouts. It looks something like this:
1x Upper body workout — 2 Supersets targeting the chest and back, shoulders and lats
1x Lower body workout — 2 Supersets using single leg exercises targeting the quadriceps and hamstring, hips and glutes
1x Weighted calisthenics workouts — Handstand push-ups, weighted dips, weighted pull-ups, and leg raises
2x Long runs — Each run consists of around a 45-minute Zone 2 run that’s manageable and not too taxing on my joints
For each exercise, the rep range is usually around 6–10 reps at around 2–3 working sets with 2 minutes of rest in between. Usually, I’ll take around 45 minutes to complete the bodybuilding type of workouts, with some time to spare to do some mobility exercises or abs workouts.
The main focus of my runs would be to lower my heart rate while increasing my pace without increasing the duration of my runs. But with each week, hopefully, there would be some progress in my heart rate or pace, otherwise, increasing weekly mileage might be a good idea too.
Vacation Training
When you’re on vacation, you usually don’t have much time to train. Why would you anyway?
You’ve already paid for your flights, and hotels and you’re excited to travel around the country and feast on all the things you’ve not tried before, visit places you’ve never been before, and indulge in the foreign things that the country has to offer.
I don’t blame you and neither should you blame yourself.
But if you have some time before jumping into the shower, it’d be good to get a quick workout in before showering and heading to bed at night or first thing in the morning, or at least that’s what I’ll be doing.
My goal would be to not gain much body fat and maintain muscles throughout my holidays and to do that I’ll need to work a little to maintain that muscle density and continue to hit my protein intake along the way.
My workout would be fully bodyweight and they would consist of 30-minute full-body workouts that might look something like this:
20 push-ups
20 leg raises
3–5 handstand push-ups
20 banded bent-over rows
20 squats
7 pull-ups (if I have access to a pull-up bar)
And I’ll repeat this for 5 sets.
Being overseas, I’d also love to take the chance to get a quick 30-minute run around the neighborhood. Not only will I get a good workout in, I’ll also get lost in the neighborhood and be present in the new environment which is always interesting and invigorating to me.
If this sounds too difficult, you can easily get a workout in with simpler workout challenges like aiming to do 150 push-ups and 100 sit-ups or something similar to that variation.
The point here isn’t to build muscles along the way anyway. It’s just to maintain your muscles and prevent excessive fat gain.
Closing Thoughts
Training overseas doesn’t have to be complicated.
It can be incredibly easy. All you need to do is adapt to your current training program and make it slightly easier while adjusting your goals rather than simply forgoing them altogether.
If it makes things easier or more interesting, you could even opt in for a workout class in a foreign country which might be interesting to some as well.
Whatever mode of workout you take on, the idea of exercising while you’re on your vacation is usually pretty different compared to when you’re working out in your home country, but it doesn’t take too much effort to switch it up a little, and continue to get a workout in.
Want to know about experiments with Hybrid Training?
I’m Maguire, a hybrid athlete incorporating runs and functional training and I love experimenting with Fitness. I write about engineering and fitness. If you’re interested, join my newsletter to learn more about my experience with my fitness experiments!
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