Gearing Up For Holiday Workouts

With the holiday season quickly approaching, many of you are going to be feeling nervous about whether or not you’ll be able to stick with your workout programs – for good reason too.

It seems everywhere you turn right now there is yet another obligation that’s waiting for you, demanding more time that you just don’t have.

This can make it very hard to get your workouts in – so finding a good balance is going to be important.

Here’s what to consider.

Back Off The Isolation Movements

If you’re trying to reduce the total time of your workouts, you’ll want to limit the amount of isolated work you perform – bicep curls, lateral raises, leg extensions and so on.  While these are good exercises, they aren’t really going to work that many muscles at once, thus won’t burn many calories and won’t give you the best results for your time invested.

Instead, choose to do movements that work multiple muscle groups at once – bench press, squats, and deadlifts.

These should be the core of your workout program.

Do Abs Between Sets

Rather than spending another ten to twenty minutes doing ab work at the end of your workout, consider doing ab exercises between the sets while you typically would just rest.

Since the rest of your body can rest while you are doing crunches, leg lifts, or whatever you are doing for your abs, this is a good way to make better use of your time.

Reduce Total Volume

Next up, consider reducing the total volume of each lift you perform. Studies have demonstrated that you are able to reduce the total sets by half, and as long as intensity stays there, you won’t see any negative benefits.

So, if you typically do four sets, drop this down to two.  This should work just fine, provided you don’t reduce the weight.

Consider Adding Sprints

On the cardio side of things, if you aren’t doing sprint training, now’s the time to start.

Sprints will take less time (usually twenty minutes maximum) and will deliver more results in the way of fat loss.

They will be more intense, that’s for sure, but when you see the benefits they provide, you won’t want to go back.

Split Up Your Cardio

For those of you who are not interested in performing sprints at all, you might want to consider splitting up your cardio workout throughout the day.

Keep in mind that you really don’t have to get in forty five minutes straight.  Fifteen minutes three times a day can work just fine.

So, consider getting up fifteen minutes earlier to go for a run, take a short walk at lunch, and then do another fifteen minutes after dinner.

This is where having a piece of home cardio equipment can really come in handy.

So, try your best to find a way to make your holiday workouts work for you this coming season.

Do expect that you will reduce back slightly and probably won’t make any extraordinary gains during the season, as that is normal.

Trying to make this the time of the year when you do your best at weight loss for instance, would be a silly move since you have so many factors working against you.

Instead, settle for just maintaining your weight, and then come the new year you can really dive into your workout program.