Fitness: Staying in shape this summer

by: Kara Wutzke

Show of hands: who leaves for vacation and doesn’t work out even once? I’m guessing that a lot of you just dropped your magazine. But the summer holiday shouldn’t mean that your commitment to health and fitness comes to a screeching halt! Every year I watch my clients leave for the sunny season and pray that they will train wherever they go, but ‘vacation mindset’ is a big challenge.

On vacation, people start to feel like they should relax and avoid extraneous physical activities, forfeiting time they could spend on fitness. I mean, heck, it’s meant to be a break, right? Well, yes, but staying in shape is a year-round kind of thing.

You don't always need a gym, a DVD, a trainer or a class to work out. You can exercise anywhere and anytime, so I'm going to give you my favorite maintenance program. Personally, I'm usually at the beach when I do this, but you literally can do this anywhere. Twenty minutes is all it takes.

This isn't a fancy workout. It's just a series of moves that will get your heart going and burn calories. First, warm up with a light jog and dynamic stretching. Next, pick a starting point, then walk 100 feet (30 meters) and mark a finish point. Run to your end point and back to start, then perform 10-15 push-ups, 15-20 crunches (if you’re on a soft surface, otherwise skip these), 5-10 burpees and 15 jump squats. Rest for a minute and go again. See how many rounds you can pull off in 20 minutes. And the next day, aim to improve.

Trust me, when summer is over and you have not gained 5-10 pounds, you’ll know then that those 20 minutes out of each day were well worth it. And if a bit of weight still manages to creep on, well… there’s always the next fitness challenge right around the corner!

// Kara Wutzke is a fitness trainer who offers boot camps and individual classes in Guangzhou, as well as running the K2Fit Challenge, a 10-week guided fitness competition for those that want to tone up or slim down. She can be contacted by emailing k2fit.gz@gmail.com or through WeChat ID: KaraK2Fit.