Vacations--Death to Workouts

Vacations are essential. Essential to your mental health, and I believe physical health, too. If you work fourty hours, or have kids, or are basically alive, you probably aren't getting the amount of sleep you really need. Having vacation to finally sleep in for more than two days in a row can be a livesaver.

But...vacation can also interrupt your workout and movement routines. We go on vacation with the best intentions: we'll workout every day, or every other day. But vacations are for relaxing and for getting away from your normal life. Certainly you'll benefit from moving, but since you're taking a break from your normal life, take a break from exercising too...or at least the way you normally exercise.

I recently went to the beach for two weeks. I took my exercise mat and foam roller, thinking I would workout every day. I worked out once in two weeks. It just didn't happen.

I did take my bike and every day rode for a half hour to an hour--not because I felt I had to, but because I love biking, and my absolutely favorite is biking by the ocean. So I biked because I wanted to, and because it was the most convenient way to get to the little town by the beach where all the cinammon ice cream was.

So maybe instead of going on vacation with the best intentions, we should go on vacation with realistic intentions: that we're not going to do what we normally do, but that, when we want to, we'll move our bodies. It certainly beats feeling guilty about something we weren't ever going to do.