My Holiday Program

Every time I go on holidays I pack a resistance band and an exercise plan that I can do every day and that I can do in a hotel room. Here's this holiday's exercise plan:

WARM UP (about 10 minutes)
Range of Movement hip and shoulders (limbering up exercises)
30 squats (butt to ground and at a fast tempo)
15 'YTWL' each side with no weights - (lots of different ways to do YTWL. I do one arm at a time and load up by stepping forward into a deep lunge, sweeping my arm out in front; then in a flowing movement stepping the foot behind to stand up and bringing the arm up to form the letter) - very aerobic.

CIRCUIT (3 - 15 minutes, depending on how many rounds completed)
1 minute rounds of:
Burpees (with push-ups. I always do my burpees with a push up)
Inverted rows or resistance band seated rows
Bicycle crunches

COOL DOWN (5-20 minutes, depending on how much I want to stretch)
Stretching of tight muscle groups (for me it's usually piriformis, hamstrings, calves, ITB, pecs, delts, levator scap and upper traps)
I start with dynamic stretches then do static stretches for any muscles that haven't released.

I never skimp on the warm up even if I only do 3 minutes of circuit and I always stretch for at least 5 minutes afterwards.

I'll also try to fit in a few runs (Jacob's ladder in Perth is a fantastic stair run), walk everywhere, go for a swim, fit in a few saunas (a proper hot and steamy Finnish sauna around 70-80 degrees C), get a massage, eat well, sleep well and have lots of fun!

What's your excuse?

I've heard quite a few excuses from my clients as why they didn't show up for a training session, why they didn't do or only did part of their program of exercises, why they're not keeping a food diary ...
I know an excuse when I hear it, but often when you're the one making the excuse you believe that it's the reason.
I tore a calf muscle several weeks ago and used that as an excuse to have a week of lay days. The reason I didn't do any exercise at all (I could have worked on upper body flexbility or strength) was because the injury put me into a funk - I had built up my barefoot running distance to 6km since the beginning of the year with no problems and then could barely walk. So the excuse 'I'm injured' was not the real reason; the real reason was that I needed some time to get to the doctor's for diagnosis and treatment and put a recovery plan in place. Three weeks later I'm running again.

Excuses are just that, excuses. Rather than come up with an excuse, come up with the reason. If you can't come up with the reason, 'the dog ate my homework' is as good  an excuse as any :)