If you’ve ever felt like something was missing during your breaks from work or school, there’s no doubt your outlook will change for the better when you become mentally and physically active. There’s just something about staying engaged in daily activities that gives us that natural adrenaline rush. We like to stay “busy” even when we aren’t.

We have the tendency to seek out activities that bring us a sense of self-accomplishment, regardless of everyone’s personal meaning for the word. I believe a great deal of this self-accomplishment is related to staying in shape mentally and physically over breaks, so here are a few reminders along with a bonus workout since you know I’m all about fitness.

Realize that there’s no such thing as the off-season.

A true athlete or average person that wants to maintain a lean body year round understands that there’s no such thing as the off-season. While rest has its time and place, your muscles need to be activated often so they’re ready for daily activities and future workouts. The cliché, “if you don’t use it, you lose it” therefore needs to be exercised mentally and physically if you want to maintain or improve upon your body’s current capabilities.

Make New Year’s resolutions short-term goals.

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions because people typically get in the habit of focusing on too many objectives at once and turning those into one yearly goal. This mentality is what leaves them falling behind in terms of progress. So instead of making a long-term yearly goal, focus on one thing at a time by breaking down what you want to accomplish on a weekly or even daily basis.

As a strong advocate of fitness, my weekly goal is to progress in my overall performance during workouts by increasing the quality of reps of less, equal, or even more weight for select exercises. My daily goal is to do whatever it takes to fuel my body with healthy sources of energy—for performing optimally during workouts and when using my noodle. What are your short-term goals?

Maximize the efficiency of your workout space.

I’m typically a strong advocate for getting into the gym, but sometimes reality sets in with weather and leaves you with suboptimal driving conditions. This is often the case with winter weather, so you have to remain indoors. You don’t have to miss a quality workout, though. Regardless of season, the take home point is to use bad weather to your advantage. How so? You’ll begin to understand the importance of applying space-efficient workouts, whether at a crowded gym or in your own home.

I’ll expand more on space-efficient workouts in the future. But for now, I’ll leave you with a teaser workout you can apply over break. The emphasis is to be explosive on your reps while still maintaining good form for each exercise in the circuit below.

Let’s put those words into action . . .

Special thanks to the demonstrators in the video!

DB Goblet Squat

DB Swing

DB Overhead Press

In sum, it’s important to do whatever possible to stay in shape mentally and physically over breaks because “if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it!” So even if fitness isn’t your forte, I encourage you to stay mentally active by engaging yourself in a book of interest or watching an intellectually stimulating movie.

This entry was posted on December 7, 2010 at 5:32 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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