Exercise on vacation.

First off, as I mentioned last post this is something I rarely have ever done before.  While I was away at a cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, I took my 20kg kettlebell with me.  My goal, if you remember, was to complete 5 workouts while I was up there.  Funny thing about vacation workouts:  the book I took to read was the excellent The Purposeful Primitive by Marty Gallagher.  In it, he actually mentions the notion of working out while on vacation, and recommends against it!  Luckily for me I was already 4/5 of the way done.

Actually, he probably wouldn't have a problem with my goal.  His point about not working out while on vacation is valid because a vacation is a great time for someone who is a regular exerciser to take a week off of weight training and give their body a rest (knowing that there is still plenty of walking, hiking, swimming on most vacations).  In my case, I was approaching the vacation workout schedule as a chance to challenge myself to be more regular about working out in an environment free from so many of the excuses I use to avoid it generally.  This past week I haven't been able to mentally claim I was "too tired from work" or "too busy" or "I had to watch the kids".  So I was able to set a goal and achieve it, and I have to say it feels great.  On a related note I was able to lose 1.5 pounds for the week, not bad considering I didn't fast at all and there was lots of great food served every meal.  I probably would have done even better than that had my stepmom not brought a milkshake machine......

Anyway, here's what my week of cottage workouts looked like:

Sunday -Clean and Press, Kettlebell Swings (100)
Monday - A bit of variety, I did a mix of one and two handed swings for 100 total reps.  Also high pulls, goblet squats and some burpees.
Tuesday - Clean and Press, rows, more goblet squats and 100 swings (seeing a pattern there yet?)
Wednesday - Some push ups, a couple waiter presses and a hundred swings of course.
Friday - Clean and Presses and Swings.  Guess how many swings?  I actually set my alarm to get up by 6:45 to make this fit in before we had to pack up and leave.  My original intention had been to do 5 days in a row but on Thursday I was feeling a bit run down (actually had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon!) and so I felt an early start Friday was a much better idea.

So overall 500 swings for the week and quite a few presses done too, with some other exercises thrown in for practice and variety.  Maybe not the hardest-core workout week ever but I am pretty satisfied with it.