One of the best parts of life is vacation. Being able to completely remove yourself physically and mentally from the stressors, routines, and preoccupations with daily life is so refreshing and has incredible rejuvenating power. Our family just returned from an 8 night vacation in Hawaii and it was the epitome of relaxation and abandonment of typical responsibilities and obligations. However, one element of daily life we packed with us was working out-with all the indulging we were doing, we needed to maintain balance somehow (I mean, it is called ITSYBITSYindulgences after all)! For me, it can be so easy to neglect exercise on vacation, so we knew we would need to use our gorgeous new surroundings to motivate us and make it worthwhile and enjoyable. So we took that to heart and utilized every part of the beach, sand, and sunshine to work for us during our workout. Here’s what we did:

Utilizing a type of high intensity interval type workout, we ran sand sprints from one end of the lagoon to the other.

We followed this with lunges from the bottom of the beach near the shoreline to the top of the beach.

Next we did a plank for one minute, and side planks for 30 seconds each.

We then returned to do another sand sprint, with lunges back to the lawn.

Following, we did 20 tricep dips using the benches.

Next was wall sits against the palm trees (tree-sits?) for 1 minute each.

We did both of these circuits 2-3 times, and ended by laying a towel down on the sand (the uneven nature of the sand requires extra balance, engaging your core even more!) and doing about 5 minutes of this core routine (2-3 times through):

Planks (regular and side) for 30 seconds-1 minute

Sit and Reach: similar to a situp, but lay on your back with legs butterflied on the ground, and sit all the way up, reaching all the way through touching your toes

40 Bicycle Kicks

And in that 30 minutes we had a a full-body workout that allowed us to indulge guilt free and fully enjoy our vacation! Take advantage of your new, exciting environments when you’re on vacation, and you can use your workouts to explore wherever you are in a whole new way! Even going for a short run around the area helped us learn where things like the store, restaurants, and shops were-talk about multi-tasking!