Do You Really Lose Your Fitness When You Go On Holiday?

You’ve finally got into a good routine. You’re training regularly, feeling stronger and noticing your fitness improving. Then your holiday arrives. Suddenly you’re swapping your usual workouts for days by the pool, meals out and perhaps a few more drinks than usual. By day five, there’s often a little voice wondering whether all that hard work is disappearing.

So, how much fitness do you actually lose during a week or two away? The reassuring answer is: probably nowhere near as much as you think. A week off isn't going to undo months of work. Our bodies simply don’t lose strength and muscle that quickly. If you’ve been training consistently for months and then take a week away from the gym, you’re not suddenly going to lose everything you’ve built. In fact, a short break can sometimes do you good. Training places stress on the body. Recovery is when we adapt to that stress, so giving your muscles, joints and nervous system a little extra time to recover can leave you feeling refreshed when you return. This is particularly true if you’ve been training hard for a long period without much of a break.

So why do you sometimes feel so 'unfit' when you come back? This is where people get caught out - your first session after a holiday might feel surprisingly difficult. The weights feel heavier, you're breathing harder than expected, your coordination feels slightly off and you wonder what on earth has happened. That doesn’t necessarily mean you've lost your fitness. You’ve simply become less accustomed to training for a short period. Add in disrupted sleep, travelling, different food, alcohol and perhaps a little dehydration and it’s hardly surprising that your first workout back doesn't feel fantastic. Give yourself a couple of sessions and things will usually start feeling much more familiar again.

What about your cardiovascular fitness? Cardiovascular fitness can start to change sooner than strength, particularly if you go from being very active to doing almost nothing. But again, we're talking about a gradual decline rather than your fitness disappearing overnight. And most holidays aren't completely inactive - Walking around a new city, swimming in the pool, exploring the beach, playing with the kids or simply getting more steps than you normally would all count as physical activity. You don't need to turn your holiday into a training camp to maintain a reasonable level of fitness. Do you need to exercise while you're away? Only if you want to. If you enjoy going for a morning run, using the hotel gym or doing a quick workout before breakfast, brilliant. But you don't need to exercise because you're frightened of losing progress. A holiday is supposed to be a break from normal life. If spending seven days relaxing by the pool is exactly what you need, enjoy it without feeling guilty. Fitness should enhance your life, not become another thing you have to worry about.

The bigger danger isn't the holiday - for most people, the problem isn't taking a week or two away from training, it's what happens afterwards. One week away becomes another week because you're tired from travelling. Then you tell yourself you'll start again on Monday. Monday comes and goes, and before you know it you've been out of your routine for a month. That's when a short break can turn into a genuine loss of momentum. So before you go away, make one simple decision: Know when your first session back is going to be. You don't need to make it your hardest session of the year. In fact, we'd recommend doing the opposite. Ease yourself back in, accept that the first session might feel a little rusty and get your routine moving again. Your fitness is built over months and years, not seven days Looking after your health isn't about being perfect for 52 weeks of the year.

There will be holidays, Christmases, birthdays, busy periods at work, illnesses and weeks where training simply isn't the priority. That's normal. What matters is having a routine you can keep coming back to. So if you've got a holiday coming up, enjoy it. Eat the food, have the drink, explore somewhere new, lie by the pool if that's what you fancy. Your fitness will still be waiting for you when you get home - just don't leave it waiting too long when your return.