It’s peak season for holidays abroad and at home which means many clients are planning a blowout of epic proportions! This usually means, massive carbohydrate and alcohol intake and an exercise routine that consists of walking to the bar, doing laps of the buffet and stretching to apply sun tan lotion.

These sorts of breaks can seriously dent the progress made through our training or through our clients’ training. In these situations it’s important that we set manageable and realistic expectations that help to minimize the detrimental effect of the lack of activity and excessive eating and drinking.

For those of you who have already been on one of our Personal Trainer Courses you’ll understand about the different energy systems and fuels we use when training at different intensities but here’s a quick breakdown;

When training aerobically we are working at a lower intensity (beneath the anaerobic threshold) and using both glycogen stores (stored carbohydrates) and fatty acids. As aerobic workouts are at a lower intensity the duration will typically be greater to make them more effective. When training Anaerobically in a Lactate training zone we are working at higher intensities and here we are using glycogen stores again (stored carbohydrates) and the workouts are shorter.

Whilst some clients are happy to commit time on their holidays to train aerobically by going on runs, swimming in the pool for 20-30 minutes consecutively or cycling, many find this very difficult to accomplish. Training anaerobically however can be quick, need no equipment and target those excess glycogen stores that we’re building through the holiday. An example of this is Tabata Training. On our Personal Trainer Courses we teach personal trainers how to use Lactate Intervals and Tabata training effectively as well as other CV methods.

Tabata training is a 4 minute cycle where a client trains for 20 seconds at maximum effort then recovers for 10 seconds. You can use a wide range of exercises provided you can work maximally when doing these. You can do the same exercise or u to 8 different ones. One example here could be;

• Set 1 – Press ups Set 2 – Lunges Set 3 – Squat Thrusts Set 4 – Ab Curls
• Set 5 – Plyo Squats Set 6 – Tricep Dips Set 7 – High knees Set 8 – Burpees

Repeat twice

You can see that none of the above exercises require any equipment and can easily be done in a hotel room. EVERY client can do this as the whole workout can be done in 10 minutes.
For more information on Tabata training and Energy Systems check out our Personal Training Courses.