5 Ways To Gain Muscle and Stay Lean On Holiday

5 ways to stay lean and gain muscle on holiday

Are you worried about losing that hard-earned muscle when you go on holiday this summer?

Do you want to arrive home looking and feeling better than before you went away?

Then you are going to want to read this and find out how using a few simple strategies can help you maintain or improve what you have worked so hard for in the gym.

Lets face it most of us if not all train hard all year round only to go and lose everything we’ve gained within that short 7 day holiday we cant wait to go on. Only to come back looking exactly the same as what we did 12 months ago feeling depressed about our physiques and that we have to do it all over again.

Well how would you feel if I told you that you can afford to eat huge cheat meals everyday on holiday and not have to worry about it?

Or continue progressing with your training improving or at least maintaining your physique and conditioning.

Well by applying a few simple protocols all this is possible and you can go back home still looking and feeling great. Read my 5 tips below on how to maintain muscle and stay lean while on holiday and put them into practice.

1. Keep Protein Levels High

When we travel away on business or spend some time in the sun one thing we tend to neglect is the amount of protein we consume each day compared to when we are in our everyday routine sometimes counting every calorie! It’s often far to easy to switch the protein out and replace it with as many comfort foods as you can. But this comes at a cost.

Without a sufficient amount of protein we are likely to lose muscle, which is the last thing we want. So aiming for foods such as Greek yoghurt, Lean Meats, Protein Powders, Fruits, Nuts is crucial.

2. Do Interval Training

Whether you are looking to gain weight, lose weight or just maintain we always want to keep our body fat % as low as possible and a great way to do this is through Interval training.

Why?

Interval training is shown to be a far greater method of burning calories that long steady state cardio. This is because it creates an after burn effect meaning you continue to burn calories after your workout for sometimes up to 72 hours later as your metabolism is given such a boost it can take it that long to return back to a normal level. Also you only need to work for around a 20 minute period to get this effect making Interval training a great go to option for exercising when you are away. Another great benefit is that due to the energy systems that are used in interval training it helps to keep you anabolic meaning you are less likely to break down muscle.

3. Try Intermittent Fasting

A typical dieting solution that might work for you whilst travelling as well is intermittent fasting. This reason for this is that you are likely to be skipping meals whilst you are away so using this technique means you don’t have to worry about your metabolism being effected by not managing to eat at your regular intervals and here’s how it works; -

Basically you eat your days worth of calories in a selected window during the day. Usually an 8-hour period for men and 10 for women. This means that for the rest of the day you are fasting, which helps to reduce fat storage as fasting has great fat burning effects.

The reason this can be very beneficial for most people is because generally when we are on holiday or travelling our meals tend to be a lot bigger so therefore by intermittent fasting you can still afford to have perhaps two big meals that you will enjoy eating out and not blow your calorie goal into oblivion.

4. Work Out in your hotel room

That’s right you don’t need a gym to get a good workout in while you’re away. If where you are staying has a gym or if there is one close by that you can get a pass for then go for it. But why not start your day off with a quick full body circuit or HIIT workout in your room or on the balcony if you have one.

My Advice would be to use the tabata style protocol where you exercise at your maximum intensity for a period of 20 seconds followed by a 10 second rest period. You then repeat this a further 7 times meaning you will have completed 8 x 20 Second bursts. This is one complete round of tabata. Rest around 2-3 minutes and aim to do 3-5 rounds of this.

Tabata is so effective in creating that after burn effect I mentioned earlier making it the perfect choice. Also because you are working at maximum intensity it ensures you stay in a catabolic state and will not break muscle down (you can even gain some).

With regards to exercise choices just select any of the following;- Press ups, Bear Crawls, Squat Jumps, Crunches, Leg Raises, Burpees, Froggers, Inch Worms.

I would recommend selecting 4 exercises and just repeating each one during the round the make the 8 x 20 Second intervals. But be creative and select some of your own exercises too and like I said you definitely don’t need more than a hotel room to do this! My Super HIIT workout available on my website here - http://bit.ly/2bnI0z6 is a great plan to take on holiday with you.

5. Workout before a meal

Do you want to gain some “free” calories in the day? Don’t we all! Then working out before a meal is a great idea and here’s why…

When you workout your body uses all of its energy stores in the muscles (Glycogen we take from carbohydrates). Therefore with these stores being completely depleted from a HIIT workout we need to replenish them and we need to eat carbohydrates to do this. So you are almost entitled to a cheat free meal as you wont store any carbohydrates as body fat until your glycogen stores are replenished. Go easy though!

As you can see by implementing a few simple strategies into your daily routine when you are travelling you can be sure to come back feeling like you have maintained most of what you worked long and hard for before you went.

Hopefully this will be useful for the majority of you and remember any further questions just ask.

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