The holiday season is a great opportunity to take a break from your sport and training, allowing you to unwind both mentally and physically. With the winter sport season now upon us you can lock in all the hard work you have done over the pre season. By allowing yourself to enjoy the time off, you can come back to training and games with a rejuvenated excitement for your sport.
While taking a break is a good thing, you don't want to go completely cold turkey ad not train at all. The good news is, the amount of training you need to do to maintain your current fitness levels while on break is very minimal. In terms of muscle mass and aerobic fitness, you only need to do one session a week. This can be through the use of bodyweight exercises and isometrics for muscle mass and an easy run/ride/swim/hike for your aerobic health. Speed, again only has to be trained once a week with only 1 or 2 max effort reps at around 40-60m, so this could be done as your warm up before your easy aerobic run.
The aim of fitting in training on holidays is just to be doing something rather than nothing, just get your muscles and blood moving so you're not coming back to sport all stiff.
In terms of nutrition, it's okay to indulge in dessert or go out for dinner while on holiday, but it's important to be mindful of how often you're doing it. Don't over indulge at buffets or restaurants, and try to limit takeout meals.
Ultimately, your eating habits shouldn't be something you're overly concerned with while on holiday. It's important to have a healthy relationship with food and allow yourself to enjoy it while still maintaining your performance and body composition goals. Remember, 2 weeks of holiday indulgence won't undo all the hard work you've put in over the past year. Keep things in perspective and enjoy your well-deserved break.
Staying hydrated is going to be very important as well, especially if you're travelling to a hotter climate than where you live. When you leave your current routine, sleeping in, eating out, not exercising as much, it can be very easy to forget to bring a water bottle with you. Any easy way to get around this is just to drink a bottle of water with each meal you eat. This way you're getting plenty of fluids in, you don't have to carry a water bottle everywhere you go, and it will help with overindulging at dessert if you're getting full on water.
For more information on strength and conditioning ofr youth athletes and increasing your sports performance, check out our website and podcast (available on Spotify and YouTube!).
Matt Hucul
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Inner Athlete - Bayside's premium strength and conditioning coaching for youth athletes
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