It's the holiday season, and you are on a long break from school and athletics. Food and alcohol are abundant, but so is time. You want to spend as much of it as you can catching up with friends and family and enjoying the festivities, but you also want to make sure that you return to school and your sport in prime condition. How do you make sure you stay fit during the holiday? Follow our 12 tips to keep yourself moving during the holidays without sacrificing time and company. 

1. Have a plan
   Create a plan for your training sessions. This can be to make sure you “complete X amount of workouts a week” or have workouts scheduled into your day. If you schedule your workouts, you are more likely to complete them as they are already integrated into your day without interfering with other events. 

2. Exercise in the morning
   Get your training sessions completed early. This will leave you with the remainder of the day to devote to holiday fun and festivities. 

Related: How to Make Your Time More Valuable as an Athlete

3. Move
   Make sure you get some sort of movement in daily. This means getting up every 30-60 minutes to take a lap around the house, do a few push ups or squats, anything to move your body. The worse thing you can do during this time off is to become sedentary. 

4. Ditch the long workouts for shorter ones
   Instead of completing training sessions that last one or two hours, aim for quick and effective 30-minute sessions. These can be made up of High Intensity Interval Training, Tabata training, or interval sprint sessions. Although short in comparison to the usual training, training in this way can be highly effective at maintaining fitness levels. 

5. Focus on 3 Compound Movements each training session
   When you focus on a few compound exercises in a session, you are maximizing your time and firing up multiple muscle groups at the same time. Even better, many compound exercises can be completed at home as bodyweight movements, or you can easily integrate items you have at home to add resistance, such as a backpack loaded with books, gallon milk jugs, or cans of soup. 
   
   Some compound exercises you can call on during this time, and in regular training sessions are different variations of squats, deadlifts, hip thrusts, pushups, pull-ups, rows, dynamic planks, and lunges.

6. Make exercise a social event
   You don't have to go at it alone. Instead of completing training sessions alone, enlist your family and friends to help. Bring a friend to the gym with you so you can spend quality time while also getting in some movement. Have a friendly pick-up game of soccer/basketball/football/etc. with your family. Go for a family walk after breakfast.

7. Take advantage of seasonal activities
   There are so many events occurring during this time of year that you cannot easily do during the summer. Try switching one of your training sessions for a fun, seasonal activity such as ice skating, skiing, snowboarding, sledding, walking around a Christmas market, or even strolling a Christmas lights event such as Zoo Lights in D.C.  

8. Try something new
   Take this time to try something new such as Yoga, Pilates, Indoor Rock Climbing, or a Trampoline bounce house. These are all forms of physical activity that will push your body in new ways.

9. Stay hydrated and eat sensibly 
   When you cannot get in physical activity, and even when you can, focus on remaining hydrated and eating sensibly, at least most of the time. If you can maintain a sensible diet and stay hydrated, when you get back to school and your sport, it will not be as difficult to get back into the swing of things. 

Related: Nutrition for Athletes: Overview

10. Prioritize sleep/rest
    Take this time to prioritize sleep and rest. During the school year, you maintain a very busy schedule and sometimes sleep is not high on your priority list. While you have the time to rest you should! This will help reduce the risk of injury and provide a necessary mental reset. When you arrive back at school, your body and mind will be ready to work. 

Related: 6 Tips to Improve Your Sleep Schedule

11. Focus on your mental well-being
    While you have some down time, you should pause for a moment and check in on yourself. Have you been taking care of your mental wellbeing just as much as your sports performance? During this time, prioritize your mental health and wellbeing by tuning into your needs. Give yourself a much-needed day of self-care such as getting your hair and nails done or getting a full body massage to loosen up your muscles. 

12. BE REALISTIC
    This is the holiday season, after all! Don't be too hard on yourself when it comes to exercising. You should expect to miss a session or two, to indulge in food and alcohol, and to sleep in a bit. Participating in the festivities and prioritizing time with your friends and family will not derail your sport performance! 

**Rebecca Lutz is not only a certified personal trainer but also maintains certifications in Strength & Conditioning and Fitness Nutrition, as well as having earned her BA in Psychology for The George Washington University.** 

* Originally published on December 14, 2021, by Rebecca Lutz