UPDATE 7th January 2016: By following the dieting advice in this post I managed to lose 5% body fat in two weeks while maintaing muscles and strength (pulled two reps of 140 kG deadlift which is a PR at this time for me).

I used to have contrasting feelings about holidays:

"Awesome I'm gonna be back home, see my family, relax, eat proper food!"

"Fuck this shit I'm gonna lose all my goddamn gainz, goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit!"​ (yes, there's an Eric Cartman inside each and everyone of us)

Furthermore my Christmas Holidays are spent in South of Italy. Let me show you the staples of this cousine:

Did anyone say proteins?​ Did anyone scream "low-carb", beat his chest and pass out?

If you wanna find a less anabolic diet than this one, it's called Fruitarianism.

Furthermore we are talking about South of Italy. A magical mystical place where the words: "No, thanks" as answer to someone serving you food are long lost in a legend that still historians are trying to figure out.

This is the place where if you say "no thanks" to your nonna, she gives you The Look™. ​



Credit for this pic goes to the facebook page "Nonna Paola", an emigrant from Calabria (also south of Italy) living in Australia who behaves *exactly* like my grandma.

So you break her heart and have to work hard to gain again her respect and ranks in the family.

Now, I have been working so fucking hard to gain from January 2014 my 28 pounds (13 Kg) of mostly muscle mass religiously weighting every freaking thing I'm cooking and training consistently at least 3 times per week and I don't want to absolutely make some of this gains go to the sink.

In this post I will describe how to eat and how to train when you are on holidays where conditions are way​ lower than sub-optimal and everything around you screams: "fuck this shit, carpe diem, YOLO".



As a side note, the ancient Roman writer Horace who wrote the beautiful little poem with those famous words (and I'm not talking about YOLO) was born not very far from where my parents live so yeah, the epicurean lifestyle is really, I mean REALLY ingrained in the culture here.

How To Train During The Holidays

I'm considering that you have no access to a gym nor dumbells/barbells. I feel you cringing already.​

One of the biggest #firstworldproblem and I've been there, I know how tough and demotivating this can feel.

BUT FEAR NOT! Let me tell you who is gonna be your friend for the next week or two: calisthenics!



Dafuq is calisthenics? Yeah, I never heard that weird word too until I moved to the Netherlands where all my friends are totally into it. Basically calisthenics is a kind of training that doesn't need a gym but you just need a pull-ups bar. It involves bodyweight exercises by pulling, pushing, bending, jumping and swinging.

It's pretty cool to watch, I'm 100% positive chicks will dig it and makes you very very flexible, which, as you know, is pretty useful in a wide variety of situations *WINK WINK*. Typical exercises you will find in a calisthenic routine: push-up, pull-ups, chin-ups, ​handstands, muscle-up, dips, split squats, etc etc.

Now, I'm not expert in calisthenics (although I want to learn more on it in the coming period) and I could have read the Bible of this way of training​ but ain't not time to do that.

So I did two things:

I bought this amazingly well done and famous 12 weeks course

I asked my friend Jeroen who's into calisthenics since a lot and has even a "training while travelling" kinda blog www.travelletics.com to help me design a routine to work out during my Christmas holidays

Now, before you start whining "but I saw from Instagram that you were training in a gym...", you are completely right. In fact this is the first time that I train in an actual gym while on holidays. I managed to get a ridiculous cheap price and I thought why not.

All the years before I have been training at a park with bars using calisthenics (and impressing several kids that joined me in the training #truestory). Furthermore, for few days I will be training with bars again when the gym is closed.

But let's get to the routine.



The Calisthenics Routine To Use On Holidays​

I asked Jeroen (btw, hi Jeroen!) to design a two days split for me and he gave me this very good routine that I'm going to describe here.

If you want to get this routine in a handy PDF, leave your name and email here below.​ I WANT THE TRAINING ROUTINE

The first number is the number of sets, the second, the number of repetitions. So 3x20 means 3 sets of 20 repetitions (reps). When there is only one number then it means just the number of reps.

All you need is a pull-up bar (you can buy this one which is pretty good).

Cardio Should I do cardio during my holidays? Here's what I do: On the days after heavy eating I perform a session of Tab​ata with running (I have to admit though that I did it only once, the day after Xmas).

What does it mean? You sprint for 20 seconds, rest for 10 and repeat this for 8 times. The entire workout lasts 4 minutes in total. You might think: "fuck yeah, this is easy!". At the third repetition you'll start hoping you wrote your will before leaving home.

Day A: Legs + Back + Biceps

Legs

3x20 Jumping Jacks

8 Pistol Squats

I personally fucking hate these ones. If you have limited mobility (and this is so gonna be the case, trust me) you can do them while holding something in front of you to keep you in balance.

40 Lunges

40 Duck Walk

3 minutes Wall-Sit

*she's HOT*​

Back + Biceps

​2x6 Muscle-Up

This is not for everyone, the heck I also can't do it yet. This is a very difficult exercises to perform that needs training. Therefore even if you can't perform a complete muscle-up, keep trying. ​

6 Type-writer Pull-ups

This is not easy either but try as well to do it as much as you can.​

10 Shoulder-width Chin-ups

8 Wide-grip Pull-ups

8 L-sit Pull-ups

10 Back-Extension

Day B: Chest + Triceps + Abs

Chest + Triceps​

3x12 Handclap Push-ups​

15 dips

10 Pseudo-Pushups​

10 Dips on Straight Bar

10 Diamond Push-ups

Abs

3x20 Half-Burpees

10 Leg Raises

8 Windshield Wiper

This is also very good as a stretch for the lower back btw.

6 Dragon flags

3 minutes Plank

Perform all the exercises after each other with 30 seconds rest between exercises. Then repeat for 3 times. Between each iterations, rest for 2 minutes.

To download this routine as a nice well organized PDF, leave your email below.​

I WANT THE TRAINING ROUTINE

How To Eat During The Holidays

It can be overwhelming to not be able to stick to the usual food routine, religiously prepped food and all of that.

Here's what I do:

If I stay at my parents, I buy whey protein there. If I have to travel around I bring it with me as much as I can in a plastic bag. I never had problems at the airport.

If I can, I bring casein powder with me otherwise I substitute it with cottage cheese (should this be impossible to find I use eggs).

I try to eat 1-1.5 g of proteins per pound of bodyweight.

I take a multivitamin with me to use it just twice per week.

I am off cre﻿atin﻿e for max two weeks.

On days I'm not training I don't eat carbs (veggies are fine).

Intermittent fasting everyday (I do this also while not on holidays too; soon I'll write about it).

On heavy eating days (e.g. Christmas eve, New Year's eve, etc.) I fast for as long as possible having only the heavy meal as the only one of the day. (if I train that day I will still have my protein shake before and after training)

The days I am travelling I fast for as long as possible having a big meal at dinner.

Since I'm less active, I reduce my caloric intake.

I try to stick to my eating routine as much as possible and you need to learn to say no and "be different" if you care about your goals.

Fasting can be pretty hard especially if people start cooking right under your nose things like this one:



My suggestion is breathe deeply in those moments focusing on your breath and in case of emergency, green tea (here a study on appetite suppression caused by green tea)​

In conclusion

If you don't wanna train at all, it's your choice, I'd still do some light exercise at home like diamond push-ups and some bodyweight squats.

Two weeks will not ruin your gainz and I found out that when I take off from the gym for a week or so, I get stronger when I am back because I let my body rest and then recover.

So we have seen how you can stay jacked asf while everybody around you is not. You are welcome.​



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