09 Dec Five holiday fitness tips

Holiday travel and obligations often make it impossible to keep your regular fitness routine.
However, with some creative thinking and a little advanced planning you can keep your fitness level from dropping off too much.
Here are five holiday exercise tips to help get you through the holidays as fit as possible:

Walk the walk
Little things like getting in some extra walking can keep you more limber and burn off some key calories. You can start your day off with a walk with family, or go out for a brisk walk after lunch or dinner.
If there are places close to where you’re staying, walk instead of driving when possible. Of course, if it’s 20 degrees out, we can all understand jumping in a heated car in that case.
When you’re out shopping, do little things like take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator.

Book a hotel room that has a fitness room
Do some research to find out what hotels have weight room facilities. Many actually offer treadmills, elliptical and exercise machines. If an pool is available (better be indoors for cold-weather climates), bring your swim trunks and swim some laps.

Pack a set of resistance bands
Resistance bands can be used in a variety of ways to stretch and strength train.
They can easily be packed into a suitcase and are especially valuable when traveling and your normal workout equipment isn’t available.

Do yoga
Yoga stretches are proven to help keep you more limber and the deep stretches will help you increase circulation and reduce stress during the holidays.

Get back to basics
If the hotel doesn’t have exercise facilities, you can still get a workout in. Pack some tennis shoes and exercise in your hotel room. Some exercise ideas are: walking lunges, duck walks, leap frog jumps, pushups and sit-ups. You can also do triceps extensions by using the bed or desk as a support to push up and down.
Go for a jog around the hotel, use the hotel’s treadmill if available or swim laps if possible.

At Home Fitness consultant Aaron Dorksen’s blog deals with a variety of fitness topics, ranging from workout tips, motivational ideas and feature stories on how exercise impacts people’s lives. E-mail him with comments, questions or ideas for future blogs at aaron@athomefitness.com