Captain Obvious here and it is summertime.  Which means there are a lot of family vacations happening.  My athletes are no exception.  We have a bunch of them on vacation right now.

Unless you happen to be the unlucky child of one said speed/strength coach (me) who makes sure his daughter does not miss a workout on our family vacations, your athlete probably is not going to be working out a whole heck of a lot.

This could be a much needed break for your athlete so it could be a blessing in disguise.

OR…

If your athlete is going to start fall practices August 1, then taking a week off to relax or have a break (should have heard my last rant about “breaks”) could be detrimental to your athlete’s training regimen.

Let’s examine what options you have for your athlete to get those workouts in.

The optimum scenario is that your vacation will be around a full service gym that you will have access to.  Your performance coach has given you a strength/speed/conditioning workout that you now can follow to the letter.

The gym has everything that you need for your workout.  You diligently go there on your downtime of your vacation and accomplish what you need to accomplish to stay on point with your training.  Please stop laughing, this could happen.

Realistically, you don’t have that luxury.  With that in mind, you need to examine what you do have and what areas of focus are most important and how to make sure you are hitting those key components.

Let’s take a look at it starting with what I feel is the most important area to hit:

  • Conditioning – If you do absolutely no conditioning and lie around for a week, that could set you way back.  If you are running cross country, then it is absolutely imperative to find a running path or at the very least a treadmill.  You need to make sure you are getting your miles in.  What exactly that may be, I don’t know because I’m not a distance coach.  Ask your cc coach to give you a workout to follow on your vacation based on mileage or time and try to adhere to it.

    If you are any other field sport in the fall, you need a different type of conditioning.  You are four weeks out from practice starting.  Your body needs to transition to a type of conditioning that will mimic the speed endurance you will need for your start/stop movements over an extended period of time.  The easiest way to address this is by doing interval running.  This could be accomplished in 15 minutes if done right.  Sprint 15 seconds and jog 45 seconds and repeat that cycle for 15 minutes.  Most people just need 100M of space or a treadmill.  As you get better, you could do a 30:30 split, 30:45 split, or 30:60 split depending on how you feel your conditioning is.

    You do this 3 times during a week of vacation and you’ll be fine.  You could combine it with 15-30 minutes of play on the off days.  Play some singles tennis or swim some laps easy in the pool.  When you return for summer conditioning, you won’t have missed a beat.

    Or you can run the stairwell if you are in a pretty tall hotel.  Run it up and take it easy coming back down.  You’ll feel this everywhere.

  • Strength Training – If you can hit each body part just once during your vacation at a pretty high intensity, then you will maintain your strength levels and be ready to go when you get back from vacation with your normal lifting program.  Use the hotel gym you are at and see what they have to offer.  At the very least do push-ups, pull-ups, planks, split squat jumps, and squat jumps.  This will hit as much as your body as you can without weights.

  • Speed – This can be hit with the conditioning part as long as you truly sprint the interval component.  You can also do some vertical jumps for sets to stimulate your fast twitch muscle fibers.  Find a step on a staircase and see if you can do single leg hops up and down on the step as fast as you can for 15 seconds each leg.  Do several sets of that and all that should help keep your speed up.

  • Nutrition – Every meal that you eat on vacation doesn’t have to be a vacation type meal.  Yes, indulge if you must, but remember as an athlete you could be eating 4 to 5 times a day.  As long as you eat no more than 2 of those meals like you are on vacation, you can properly fuel your body with quality nutrition befitting an athlete.  You might surprise yourself.  Some days you might eat all your meals healthy with the exception of having one dessert at dinner.

This was like a crash course 101 on how to exercise on vacation if you are an athlete.  It can be done, if you are willing to commit to it.  As mentioned above, it does not have to be daily.  Look at your itinerary and figure out the best days and times to get this stuff in.

You will be glad you did when you return to summer conditioning.  And your coaches will notice the discipline you showed by maintaining your fitness level even on vacation.  Who knows!  That might make the difference between you making Varsity or JV next season.

Photo courtesy of Marcela Escandell on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/buscavientos/