Travel Agency
Spring, as well as being a time for fitness restarts, is also a time for travel and many of the Leftfield contingent are heading to warmer climes or taking advantage of school holidays to get away for a couple of weeks.
When they’ve been training all year they go with instructions only to enjoy themselves but if their training has been interrupted or, particularly if they’ve only recently started, they are issued with a quick and easy, do-anywhere-need-nothing travel program. Where necessary, this includes dietary guidelines.
And that may strike you as draconian. Because it’s a holiday for chrissake!
And I’m with you on that. So I’ll draw your attention back to the word necessary, because that doesn’t mean necessary for me. I don’t require anybody to do anything on holiday. Or any other time.
Of course, many things may be necessary for me and I’ll do those things, or I won’t. As things may be necessary for them. And they’ll do them or they won’t.
Are you with me?
Because for all the reasons commonly cited as to why we have let our (training or dietary) practice lapse, some make repeat appearances. Some are even legitimate.
But none appear nearly so often, and with so little substance, as 'travel'.
A one-word explanation tabled with the sort of casual confidence that can only mean it's considered to be an ace up the sleeve; a coup de grace.
Case. Closed.
_____
Did you get your training done?
No. I couldn't, I was travelling.
_____
Silence. No further information forthcoming. Like it’s a sentence that makes sense.
Astute readers will have quickly ID’d the problem here. It's not the travel. It's not even the 'no'. It’s the meek surrender of ‘couldn’t’. The ceding of responsibility. The abdication of agency.
If you didn't, fine. But, for the love of God, own it.
Given all the times we are legitimately sidelined— no shortage of instances in which we truly can't— maintaining a practice will be hard enough, thanks very much. If we further choose to bench ourselves voluntarily we can look forward to nothing good. Not that this is, necessarily, a problem either. It is when deluding ourselves we have done enough and that our much-longed-for fitness (or dietary) cheque is in the mail.
When it isn't.
Either you do enough, or you don't. It's not a negotiation. Many find this annoying, but not annoying enough to do the one thing to solve it.
Exceptions are never a problem when they are exceptions, but if your practice is not resilient to 'life' it's not a practice. And if it's not a practice, it's either starting or ending. Things will certainly happen, fitness or dietary-wise, at the start. But then if it IS going to end in the not-too-distant future, it hardly matters. For all the fascination with before and after in this industry, there is but one place where the magic happens: during. The longer you extend it the better.
It might feel like a parallel universe, but should you find yourself outside your normal routine, the dictates of body and mind are as demanding as ever, if not more so: long-haul flights and plane food are hardly ticks in the plus column.
Unless you’re travelling into orbit—and not even then—your geographical location has nothing to do with it so stick to normal programming as much as possible with some concessions to being on holiday.
Firstly, it might, necessarily, be different. If you usually train with heavy weights or other equipment you can enjoy the relative freedom of bodyweight training. Secondly, even when the program is fundamentally the same you’re still better to create the habit of exercise away from home. The same habit— ideally training at the same time on the same days.
Most importantly, this doesn’t just maintain your habit but reinforces it. The recognition that: 'even when my routine is disrupted, or I'm travelling, or I don't have time to do a full session, or whatever… I am still going to train', is that certainty of action described last week and the holy grail of fitness.
Get it right and all else follows.
In this respect, all programs are the same: you have to build a habit. Only here, because of the typically intermittent nature of travel, it’s much harder and you have to reestablish the habit every time.
But you need only do it once to realise it’s well worth it, and not just for the reasons outlined above. You are trying to have a good time, right? Well, exercise doesn't make anything worse. It helps with jet lag, a bad mood, and even a hangover. Do what you can but nobody is suggesting you pass on the croissants, knockout pushups at the Parthenon and leg raises at the Louvre.
All is as much a fiction as nothing.
You take an all-things-considered approach, you’re just playing an away game. When simply trying to hold ground and otherwise offset some of the downsides you only need to do something towards that end.
If you’re not on holiday and travelling for more than a couple of days most weeks a different approach is required, otherwise, these concessions can be made on the basis a travel program is not purposed to get you super fit, or strong, only to bookmark your progress, so you can pick up from where you left off instead of making up lost ground.
It’s the lowest of bars. A 15-minute circuit every other day and eating sensibly when not presented with a local delicacy that you should absolutely enjoy to the fullest about sums it up, especially if you’re more active than normal.
And everything is better for it. Whatever the reason for travel—business or pleasure—maintaining your routine is all upside. You will look, feel and perform better, right? Nobody ever trains and wishes they hadn't.
All of which is great news. Because whether you tell tall travel tales or you front up, whether you hold the line or let it slide.
Your body always tells that same story.
Bon voyage.
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI