Ramona’s Trainer: Vacation Workout

By Peter San Nicolas

I write to you from the shores and vast dunes of Pismo Beach with the salt water air blowing gently through my travel trailer, gearing up for a 15 minute blitz of a workout before Shayna and I haul the three kids to the shoreline.

I bet you think to yourself leading up to a vacation that it also means a vacation from your fitness routine. I urge you not give in to your lazy mode 100 percent. Fifteen minutes per day is all I ask. Fifteen minutes of some sort of dedicated fitness. Fifteen minutes of something that is good for your heart, soul, mind and strength.

I took two tools on the road with me, my TRX and my Ramona Fitness Stick Trainer. This series will last three weeks and I have three different workouts planned for you this trip and here’s the breakdown for the first:

Workout #1

Run or walk the dunes of Pismo Beach for 10 minutes. Find some beach stairs and walk or run them three times. Next, utilize my RFC Stick Trainer to do a variety of exercises including core work, chest, shoulders and triceps.

The first exercise is called the twist. Find an immovable post and attach the end of the tube to it. Grasp the bar of the trainer and lock your elbows at right angles and rotate around your spine, mimicking a golf or baseball type movement.

Run the stairs again.

Next, move on to the chest muscle by doing a unilateral resistance press. With the tube attached behind you, grab the bar in front of your chest and press forward. The tube should only be attached on one end, so it’s going to feel uneven. What I tell clients is to make it look like it has equal resistance.

Run the stairs again or do 10 jumping jacks.

Moving on to shoulders, attach the tube at a low point and again with the resistance only on one side, grasp the bar with both hands and press it overhead, making it look like the resistance is even.

Run the stairs again.

Moving on to the triceps. I call this the javelin. Pretty simple — grab the stick trainer with one end attached by the tube and make a javelin throwing motion, working the triceps.

Run the stairs again.

Last, we have one more core move. This is called the core slap shot. The Stick Trainer again only has one end attached with the tube. Grasp the bar with low hand underhand and high hand overhand and make a slap shot motion tensing the core muscles.

Run the stairs again.

For a full video of this workout, visit my Ramona’s Trainer Facebook page and become a fan.

Peter San Nicolas owns Ramona Fitness Center at 558 Main St.