Short answer
Do two full-body sessions a week, about 45 minutes each, built on four big movements: a squat, a hip hinge, a press and a pull. Pair exercises that use different muscles into supersets to halve your rest time, do 2 to 3 hard sets of each, and stop one or two reps short of failure. That keeps your muscle, and often keeps you progressing, while leaving most of the holiday for the holiday.
On holiday you want to train, but you do not want to spend every morning in a gym. Your normal split, with a chest day, a back day and a leg day, falls apart the moment you miss one session, because a whole muscle group goes untrained for a week or more.
The fix is a full-body plan. Every session hits every major muscle, so each visit counts and a missed one costs you very little. Below is the plan, the reasoning behind each choice, and swaps for whatever gym you end up in.
Why full-body works best when you travel
Three findings from the research make this plan work:
- Twice a week beats once. A 2016 meta-analysis by Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger found that training each muscle at least twice a week produced more growth than once a week. Two full-body sessions do that with only two gym visits.
- Maintaining takes far less than building. In Bickel and colleagues' 2011 study, young adults kept their muscle while training once a week with a third of their previous volume. A week or two of lighter training will not undo your progress. Our guide to how much muscle you lose on holiday goes into the detail.
- You can train efficiently without losing results. A 2021 review in Sports Medicine, "No Time to Lift?" by Iversen and colleagues, concluded that compound lifts, supersets and fewer but harder sets keep most of the benefit in much less time.
How to pick the exercises
When your time is limited, every exercise needs to earn its place. The ones that do train a lot of muscle at once, can be loaded heavily, and work in almost any gym.
- A squat pattern for your quads and glutes.
- A hip hinge, such as a Romanian deadlift, for your hamstrings, glutes and back.
- A horizontal and a vertical press for your chest, shoulders and triceps.
- A row and a vertical pull for your back and biceps.
Those six movements cover almost every muscle you care about. Add a couple of small exercises for the muscles that compound lifts undertrain, like the sides of your shoulders, and you have a complete programme.
The plan
Two workouts, A and B. Exercises with the same letter are a superset: do a set of A1, rest about a minute, do a set of A2, rest about a minute, and repeat until you have done all the sets. Then move on to the B pair. Each workout takes about 40 to 45 minutes including a short warm-up.
Workout A
| Movement | Options | Sets × reps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Squat | Back squat, hack squat, leg press or goblet squat | 3 × 6–10 |
| A2 | Vertical pull | Pull-up, assisted pull-up or lat pulldown | 3 × 6–12 |
| B1 | Horizontal push | Bench press, dumbbell press or chest press machine | 3 × 6–10 |
| B2 | Hamstring curl | Seated or lying leg curl, or Nordic curl | 2 × 8–12 |
| C1 | Lateral raise | Dumbbell or cable lateral raise | 2 × 10–15 |
| C2 | Calves or abs | Calf raise, cable crunch or hanging knee raise | 2 × 10–15 |
Workout B
| Movement | Options | Sets × reps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Hip hinge | Romanian deadlift, trap bar deadlift or hip thrust | 3 × 6–10 |
| A2 | Overhead press | Barbell, dumbbell or machine shoulder press | 3 × 6–10 |
| B1 | Row | Chest-supported row, cable row or one-arm dumbbell row | 3 × 8–12 |
| B2 | Single-leg | Bulgarian split squat, walking lunge or leg extension | 2 × 8–12 |
| C1 | Biceps | Any curl | 2 × 10–15 |
| C2 | Triceps | Dip, cable pushdown or overhead extension | 2 × 10–15 |
How hard to push
Fewer sets only work if each one counts. Finish each working set with one or two reps left in the tank: the bar should be slowing down and your form should still be clean. Use a weight that lands you inside the rep range, and if you hit the top of the range on every set, go heavier next session. The C pairs can be taken a little closer to failure, as they are safer exercises to push.
Warm-up
Five minutes on a bike or rower, then two or three lighter ramp-up sets of your first squat or hinge. That is all. You do not need a 20-minute mobility routine to train well.
How to fit it into your week
| Gym visits a week | What to do | What it gets you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 visit | Workout A, adding 2 sets of rows and 2 sets of Romanian deadlifts at the end | Enough to hold on to muscle for a week or two |
| 2 visits | A, then B, at least two days apart | Every major muscle trained, close to your normal results |
| 3 visits | A, B, A, then B, A, B the following week | Most muscles trained twice a week: you can keep progressing |
Morning sessions are the easiest to protect on holiday, before the day fills up with plans and before the heat in hot countries. If you are moving between places, train on arrival days in a new town: it is a good way to shake off the journey and find your bearings.
Short on time on the day? Do just the A and B pairs and skip the small exercises. That is about 25 minutes and still trains every major muscle. A short session you actually do beats a long one you skip.
When you cannot find the equipment
Gyms abroad vary enormously. One might have three squat racks and a wall of Hammer Strength machines; another might have dumbbells up to 25 kg and a cable machine. Because the plan is built on movement patterns, you can always swap within a slot: a leg press for a squat, a dumbbell press for a bench, a cable row for a chest-supported row.
If you need something specific, such as a squat rack, a hack squat or a trap bar, check before you go. GymMaps lists the equipment in each gym, with photos from people who have trained there, and you can filter the map by equipment. On days with no gym at all, our hotel room workout guide is the back-up plan.
Coming home? Your first week back, go back to your normal programme but drop a set from each exercise and use slightly lighter weights. Strength comes back within a couple of sessions. Our guide to getting back to training after a holiday covers it in full.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best workout to do on holiday?
A full-body workout built on compound lifts: a squat, a hip hinge, a press and a pull, plus a few smaller exercises. Training your whole body each session means every visit counts, so missing one costs you little. Two or three 45-minute sessions a week is enough to maintain, and often build, muscle.
How many times a week should I go to the gym on holiday?
Two sessions a week is the sweet spot for most people. Research on training frequency suggests training each muscle twice a week builds a bit more muscle than once, and studies on maintenance show one hard session a week can preserve muscle for a while. So two is plenty, three is a bonus, and one is far better than none.
Can I maintain muscle with one workout a week?
For a short trip, yes. In a 2011 study by Bickel and colleagues, young adults kept the muscle they had built over 16 weeks while training just once a week with a third of their previous volume for the following 32 weeks. Keep the weights heavy and the sets hard; it is the volume you can cut, not the effort.
What are supersets and do they work?
A superset pairs two exercises and alternates between them with little rest, so you do more work in less time. Pairing exercises that use different muscles, such as a squat and a pull-up, lets one muscle group recover while the other works. Research suggests this saves a lot of time without hurting performance, as long as the exercises do not compete for the same muscles.
What if the gym does not have the equipment in the plan?
Use the swap for the same movement pattern. Each slot in the plan is a pattern (squat, hinge, push, pull) with several options, from barbells to machines and dumbbells. If the gym has none of them, check the equipment list before you go: GymMaps lets you filter gyms by equipment so you can find one with what you need.
Should I train on the day I fly?
Only if it fits easily. A session before a long flight is fine if you have the time and energy, but do not force it. Moving a session by a day makes no difference over a week. If jet lag hits hard, train at whatever time you feel most awake and keep the first session a little lighter.
Find a gym with the kit you need
Squat rack, trap bar, cable stack: GymMaps lets you filter gyms by equipment wherever you are staying, with day pass prices and real photos, so your two sessions a week are good ones.
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