If you make exercise a regular part of your daily routine it’s only natural that you’d want to continue to do so. However, use the occasion of getting away from home as an opportunity to change your exercise routine.

When you spend a lot of time exercising – at a gym, at home, distance running or biking – use vacation as a time to throw yourself a change up and do something different.  Our bodies adapt to stimulus quite easily, so to use a completely different exercise program for a week or two is a great way to avoid mental and physical training plateaus.

At the beach, leave your sneakers and distance running mentality at home, and do sprints and/or shuttle runs barefoot in the sand.  Throw in some calisthenics and you have an almost endless supply of vacation workout options.  If possible, take a pair of dumbbells or two, a Kettlebell or other piece of training gear and mix a few basic exercises in with sprint/agility drills on the sand, and you’ll probably get a better workout than you are used to.

The key is to stay out of the gym, whether you’re going to a rental house or resort, take a break from the indoor, traditional structured workouts whenever possible.  Certainly there’s nothing wrong with exercising while on vacation, and looking forward to doing so, but don’t let exercise dominate your plans while vacationing.

Taking time off from regular exercise when healthy is a good thing and in the long run helps progress and is important for recovery.  Time off from exercise because of an illness or injury does not offer the same benefits.  If you don’t take a break from training a couple of times per year you’ll have a greater chance of suffering from overtraining syndrome, mental burn-out or injury, which sets you back.

Well-timed breaks from your regular exercise routine will not set you back, but will help you progress.  So next time you go on vacation, give your regular workout routine a vacation, as well.

Shuttle runs are a great method of high-intensity cardiovascular exercise and are the most efficient and effective way to improve your fitness level.

For years athletes have been using shuttle runs to improve their conditioning level, as this kind of conditioning reproduces conditions that athletes contend with during competition.  Regardless of what sport you play, and especially if you aren’t active in athletics, shuttle runs give you the most bang for your exercise buck.

Shuttle runs can be performed just about anyplace providing you have at least a 10-12 yard area of relatively flat, even space.  These conditioning drills can be done inside, in your yard, at the beach, on a basketball court and – of course – on a lined field.  I’ve done them in hallways in schools, at the water’s edge by the ocean, on tennis courts and in my backyard, driveway and the street in front of my house.

The set-up is simple; pace of 8-15-yards and mark the area so you are aware of the start and finish line.  You don’t need to use cones, especially if you are doing the shuttles on a lined field, but can use anything from sticks, to disposable drinking cups and lines in the sand.

To perform the shuttles you sprint to each line, making sure one of your feet gets to the “line,” and use a side-shuffle step to change directions. Complete 4 “laps” of this course.  So if you’ve paced off 15-yards, run this course 4 times and you will have covered 60-yards. You don’t want to run past the line, slow down too early or get to the line and have to stop and completely turn around in order to change directions.

For as long as it takes you to complete the shuttle, your rest period should be 3 times as long.  So if it takes you 15-seconds to complete a 60-yard shuttle (a pretty good time if you’ve never done this before) you can rest for 45-seconds before starting your next set.  Following this formula, you can get a complete cardiovascular workout completed in 8-10 minutes.

Shuttle runs are a versatile, effective and efficient method of cardiovascular training that everyone can take advantage of.