How to stay in shape on holiday

Q What’s the best exercise to do during a beach holiday with no access to a gym?

YOU LL FEEL GOOD ’ AND GO INTO THE NEW YEAR IN BETTER SHAPE THAN THE ANC

A

Well, if you’re going to the maybe beach’one you re not would a good assume that the answer is “swim”, but swimmer or just enjoy asking stupid questions.

Let’s backtrack. Perhaps you are new to this column or live under a rock. In that case it is a great question, thank you for asking. The most accessible and easy-to-perform exercise for human beings is walking, and for those who can, running.

Besides shoes — which are optional — you need nothing else. If you live in the suburbs you will be used to the crowds of middle-aged and older people in brightly coloured vests running/walking for life. Do you know why? Because it works.

If you are worried about how to exercise while away on a beach holiday, you’re not using your common sense. This is SA, not Mauritius. Just standing in our waves at most beaches requires a decent dose of proprioception and on a good day, when there’s a storm many leagues away in the deep sea, the waves provide marvellous resistance and can send you tumbling to humility at a packed beach.

If that doesn’t appeal to you, take up the advice to walk or run. However, don’t do this if you are at a remote beach or don’t know the area, and don’t do it alone. This is a terrible SA disclaimer, but it’s our reality. Your safety is more important than your belly. It shouldn’t be like this but it is. As the Game of

Thrones plays out at a national level those of us stuck in the thick of it wonder if winter has come.

If you don’t want to swim, and feel you want to do something other than hike or run, you’re in luck. It just so happens that a doctoral candidate in the US has conducted a study to reaffirm what readers of the Water Cooler have known for years: a few minutes of high-intensity interval (HIIT) body weighttraining is as effective as training in the gym.

Obviously there are a few disclaimers. If your goal is maximal strength or muscle, HIIT body weight circuits won’t build muscle but they’ll help you stay in shape. If your goal is to run a marathon, the circuits won’t replace your training, but as the study shows, you’ll still get substantial bang for your buck.

Gabriella Bellissimo of the University of New Mexico conducted a small study with fit people in their 20s and 30s. She put them through 11 minutes of

traditional intervals on a treadmill and then put them through a body-weight circuit. Various things were measured, such as oxygen consumption, heart rate and perceived exertion and muscle stiffness.

The results: yes, a bodyweight circuit performed with enough intensity, and using the space of an office cubicle, can elicit a significant response. This is great news, as you can spend 10-minutes every morning in your chalet before you even make it to the beach.

You’re no doubt wondering what exercises were used? Gabi was good enough to share, so that we can all give it a go. Her circuit included high knees, squat jumps, scissor jacks, jumping lunges and modified burpees — she removed the push-up portion, which I recommend you keep, if you

can. There must be some upper-body work in the real world — her reason for keeping to the lower body was to draw a like-for-like comparison with sprinting and walking.

They performed as many repetitions as possible for each movement in one minute, followed by stepping on the spot for one minute, and then moved to the next all-out minute. Once the five exercises were complete, they rested for two minutes and then repeated the routine. If you’d like, do more circuits.

You don’t have to use these exercises, but pick a few bodyweight exercises you can perform properly and do little high-intensity circuits on the patio facing the ocean. You’ll feel good and go into the new year in better shape than the ANC.