Okay, but what if you *want* to exercise on vacation?
A funny story, and (related!) my latest piece for the New York Times
So, remember when I was on vacation last week and told everyone all about how I wasn’t really exercising?
Well, first of all, that didn’t turn out to be entirely true. Later the same morning I published that newsletter, my dad and brother took my kids out to give them a tennis lesson, and I found myself twiddling my thumbs and feeling a little antsy. My back was also a bit sensitive after several days on an über-soft Airbnb mattress, so I pulled up my Peloton app and did a 30-minute Pilates session. (P.S. Yes, Pilates instructors take Pilates classes too! It’s really helpful to experience the way other people teach — I truly learn something new every time — and it’s not always easy to motivate myself to just do Pilates on my own, even though I know the sequence upside down and backwards.)
A couple of days later, we switched locations and met up with friends at a hotel in the Hudson Valley. My friend Mollie recently became a yoga instructor, and she offered to teach a few of us yoga one morning on the front porch of one of our cabins. You guys, it was so wonderful! Mollie used some cueing, descriptions, and approaches I’d never tried before, and it brought a whole new element to the yoga experience. (I was so proud of her and blown away by all she’s learned and the gift of her teaching, I actually cried!) If you’re in New York, Mollie is teaching a special class at YO BK on August 18 to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association.
Anyway! Here’s the other funny/ironic thing that happened the day my “I don’t exercise on vacation” newsletter was published: I got an email from an editor at the New York Times asking if I’d like to write an article about…how to exercise on vacation. I said yes, but felt a little sheepish about it!
It turns out, every expert I interviewed — including the lovely Cedric Bryant, president and CEO of the American Council on Exercise (the organization I got my personal training certification from, btw) — talked at length about the value of rest. Dr. Bryant said the best thing to do on vacation is listen to your body and mind, and do what feels best for you, whether that’s squeezing in a workout or two, or just enjoying some much needed rest and relaxation. I loved that!!!
He also mentioned a few benefits of exercise while traveling that I hadn’t considered: For one thing, exercise helps reduce stress, which can really enhance the whole vacation experience — if you’re there to chill, a little movement can actually help you chill even more. And for another, exercise can be super helpful for sleep, and regulating our body clock: Personally, I tend to sleep like garbage on vacation, whether I’m jet lagged or not, so this resonates with me.
Anyway, what a funny thing. Here is a link to the Times article (it’s a gift link, shhh) in case you’d like to see the advice the experts shared with me on fitting movement in.
Hope you have a great week. Let’s keep going!
xo
Anna
I’ll be honest… sometimes I exercise on family vacations just to escape my children and have some alone time 😂
Whenever I see articles about working on vacation I think of a scene from Gilmore Girls where Rory's atheletic roommate says she's going to do 'laps in the ocean'! I think I might be on my way there now!