When the holidays come around, most people abandon their fitness goals. Unfortunately, a month of inactivity and overindulgence can negate much of your fitness progress from the previous 11 months. This will put you in a place where you end up making desperate New Year’s resolutions to get back on track. With proper holiday workout planning, you can avoid this big swing in your weight and fitness, so when the new year rolls around you’ll be ready to make progress instead of getting back to square one.
Now I’m all for enjoying the holidays. You should be too if you are fortunate enough to have family and friends with whom to celebrate. A part of celebrating can involve overindulging and taking a few days off from your workout routine. In the long-run, a couple big meals and a couple extra days off is probably good for you.
It’s the consistency that matters. If you let a few days of celebration turn into a month of poor choices and skipped workouts, then you’ll have a huge mountain to climb when January rolls around. Below are five keys to effective holiday workout planning.
- Set a goal
- Stick to your current schedule as much as possible
- Focus on bulking
- Keep overindulgences to the day of the holiday
- Don’t give up mid-month
Set a goal
Although it may not seem like the ideal time of the year for setting fitness goals, outlining one baseline goal can make a huge difference between what kind of challenge you’ll face in January.
You can set a very simple goal. Something like “put on no more than 5 pounds before January,” or something performance based like “maintain the current amount of pushups/pullups/squats/mile time/etc.” Check on your progress periodically. If you start veering too far away from your goal, it will provide you the motivation to follow the rest of the advice in this post.
Stick to your current schedule as much as possible
With travel, gym closings, days off, and all the festivities, it’s going to be impossible to maintain your workout schedule. This is ok. No one expects you to workout on Thanksgiving morning (although some do, which is fine too).
In the grand scheme of things, missing a couple regular workouts scattered over a month won’t hamper your progress too much. But don’t let one missed day in the gym lead to a bunch of missed days.
For instance, if you skip your normal Thursday workout on Thanksgiving, you should definitely not skip your normal Friday workout. Since most will have this day off, your biggest win is just get right back on track. Your body will feel better too if you can maintain a good level of activity after a big holiday meal.
With travel, it can be very hard to maintain this schedule while away from your normal gym, but you do have a few options here. You can focus on bodyweight workouts (this one can be done in a hotel room). You can search for gyms in the area where you’ll be staying and call them about a one day or one week pass. Or you can go for a run or do some hill sprints.
Between these options, there’s no excuse to not get right back on track. And doing a sub-optimal workout is still better than not working out.
Focus on bulking
Bulking during the holidays is a classic “bro-science” hack. And it makes sense as long as you can stick to your holiday workout routine like the previous point recommends.
If you’re not familiar with bulking, it’s when you try to gain as much muscle mass as possible within a certain amount of time. Usually a 4-6 week period works well. To do this, you need to eat a lot (especially protein) and maintain a high workout volume. The advantage to bulking during the holidays is that you don’t have to hold back on eating, because your goal is to workout like crazy and pack on muscle. But it’s a fine line to walk.
You should only use this approach if you have at least moderate experience with weightlifting and can put in the work over the holidays. Prioritize protein intake (shoot for 1 gram per pound of bodyweight), and you don’t need to worry about overindulging.
You will need to stick to a workout routine that emphasizes high volume weight-training. Instead of your normal 3 sets of 6-8 reps, you’ll need to focus on 4 or 5 sets of 10-15 reps depending on the exercise. If you need some guidance, google some high volume workout routines.
It’s hard work, but it’s great if you can head in to January with some more muscle mass, at which point you can switch your focus to leaning out for a few weeks.
Keep overindulgences to the day of the holiday
If you don’t want to bulk up, following this piece of advice will give you the most success for the holiday season. You don’t need to turn Thanksgiving into a four day binge. Enjoy the day itself and eat and drink whatever you want. Then the next day you can take an extended fast (maybe skip breakfast and have a late lunch), or return to your normal eating habits.
The same advice applies to drinking over the holidays. With many of us enjoying extended time off from work, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having a some extra drinks on the off-days. The additional booze not only adds calories, but it leads to poor dietary choices when your inhibitions are lowered.
Enjoy yourself, but keep it reasonable like a gentleman should. Enjoying the day of the holiday is encouraged. A month long feast and booze-fest will wreak havoc on your body.
Don’t give up mid-month
Let’s say your Thanksgiving turned into a three day binge. We’ve all been there. You feel terrible and bloated, and the last thing you want to do is anything physical.
Even though you didn’t follow the ideal advice for holiday workout planning, it’s ok. What’s done is done, and the best way to start feeling better is to get active again. Just focus on getting in a good workout the next day, and the rest of your habits will usually improve too.
Don’t let a few slip-ups cause you to give up until January. A good holiday workout routine and being active helps you enjoy those festive days that much more.