I hear the same thing from clients every summer, usually somewhere between packing the sun cream and doubting they’ll get a single workout in for two weeks: “I’ll just start again when I’m back.”
Here’s the problem with that. At this stage of life, “starting again” isn’t free. Strength you stop maintaining doesn’t wait patiently for you to come back to it, falling oestrogen means muscle and bone respond fast to inactivity, and two weeks off can undo more progress now than it would have done a decade ago. The good news is you don’t need a gym, a suitcase full of kit, or even much time to hold the line. You need twelve minutes and a bit of floor space.
Why “no equipment” doesn’t mean “no results”
The exercises that build and protect strength through perimenopause and menopause aren’t complicated. Squats, presses, hinges, rows, and balance work, done consistently, are still the biggest lever you have against bone and muscle loss, whether you’re lifting a barbell or just your own bodyweight. What actually matters is progressive tension on the muscle and enough consistency for your body to adapt. A hotel room, a garden, or a corner of a living room gives you enough space for all of that.
This is exactly what I built the Free 7-Day Holiday Workout Pack around. It’s live on the app now, and it’s the same format I use with clients who tell me they’ve got “nothing” to work with while they’re away.
The format: 12 minutes, 4 moves, done
Every session in the pack follows the same simple structure:
Four exercises. Three rounds each. Forty seconds of work, twenty seconds of rest. No equipment required, though a resistance band or a couple of water bottles will add load if you want it.
Day 1, for example, Full Body Foundations, is bodyweight squats, wall push-ups, glute bridges, and standing marches or high knees. That’s it. No warm-up faff, no kit list, no excuses about what you didn’t pack. You could do it on a hotel balcony before breakfast or in the fifteen minutes after the kids finally go quiet.
Why this matters more at 43+ than it did at 25
A twelve-minute bodyweight circuit might sound like it’s for beginners. It isn’t. The research on resistance training through the menopause transition is consistent: the frequency and consistency of the stimulus matter more than the size of the weight on the bar, especially for maintaining bone density and preserving muscle mass. Falling oestrogen accelerates bone loss with no symptoms and no warning, you don’t feel it happening. Which means the habit you keep on holiday, even in a scaled-down form, is doing real work you can’t see yet but will absolutely feel the benefit of later.
The version of “training” that actually protects you here isn’t the version that requires a gym membership and an hour to spare. It’s the version you can still do when your routine is disrupted, because your routine will be disrupted, by travel, by heat, by a bad night’s sleep, by life. Building a strength habit that survives disruption is the whole point.
How to actually use it
If you’re travelling: do it first thing, before the day gets away from you. Heat makes everything harder later on, and mornings are usually the coolest, calmest window you’ll get.
If you’re not travelling but time is still the obstacle: the same 12-minute format works exactly as well at home. This isn’t a “holiday workaround” so much as proof that you never actually needed the gym to keep this habit alive, the holiday just makes the excuse more obvious.
If a move needs adjusting: every exercise in the pack has a written explanation and an easier or harder variation built in, squats can be loaded with water bottles, glute bridges get a resistance band across the knees if you want more, and push-ups scale by how far you stand from the wall. Nothing here requires you to push through pain or guess at form.
Try it
The Free 7-Day Holiday Workout Pack is live on the app now, completely free, no equipment needed, twelve minutes a day. Day 1 is Full Body Foundations; each day after that rotates through upper body, lower body, balance, and core so nothing gets neglected across the week.
If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll “start again” once you’re back from holiday, this is your sign that you don’t have to wait. Twelve minutes, wherever you are, is enough to keep the thread going.