Whether it is at home or on a holiday, unless we have a ready contingent of friends and family share our fitness and exercise goals, keeping fit can be a lonely experience. Holidays are supposed to be a time to relax and enjoy the company of others. For fitness enthusiasts, this opens up a world of opportunities to train and exercise with others that have similar goals and, at the same time, build a really enjoyable social element into our holiday exercises.

It is admittedly not practical to just approach strangers who are exercising and ask them if they want to work out with us. That said, if someone approaches you and asked you to spot them in the gym or invites you to do a few laps around the roof terrace, great. You’ve found someone on your level that you can potentially train with. But many resorts that either have a pool, gym or full on fitness club built in will put together exercise programs with socialising in mind. This could be as simple as water polo in teams, relay running or similar races or spin class with 20 other people. Holiday destinations want you to socialise, and this is at the forefront of everything they do, including their fitness programs.

But holiday is also an excellent time to get relatives and friends involved, even if they do not particularly want to. Inviting someone for a swim means you do not go for a splash alone, and they will come out and take the relaxed swim for what it is. There’s also no reason why we can’t ask our kids to engage in a friendly duel on exercise bikes or rowing machines. Straight away, we turn it from a solar activity into a family friendly chance to keep fit.

Holidays should not be about ignoring the people around us and heading off to socialise with strangers in the name of keeping fit. It is perfectly possible to combine both groups so that everyone either has a quality workout (if that is what they want) or just gets to engage in fun physical activities. That’s an enjoyable holiday.