Many seek the beach for a time of vacation and relaxation. However, if you’re looking to stay in shape while on vacation, or just have the beach at your disposal for workouts, then check out these five MMA-based workouts that are easy, but very effective!

5. Sprint Intervals

To start this list, we’ll be taking a look at one of the most best, yet most effective workouts to do with sand, sprints. All you need is yourself and sand, with markers not really being needed, but cones can help. To maximize your cardio output, doing intervals like sprint 20m, jog 10, sprint 20, walk back, would be the most effective due to the resistance you’ll be getting from the sand.

4. Footwork Drills

Again, resistance is the key for this workout, as footwork drills become much more of a workout with resistance thrown into play. Shuffles, backward steps, karaoke’s, and more can be done on the beach. To make things more interesting, you can grab a speed ladder and/or cones to mix up the variety of drills.

3. Swim

Okay, this is an obvious one, but can be overlooked! Swimming is a fantastic full-body workout and has countless benefits for your muscles. However, you can make it challenging by actually judging a distance to swim, swim back, do 10 push-ups, then swim again. Doing this will increase the difficulty of the swim drastically. The best two workouts to do in between swimming is push-ups and air squats, both of which will tire out either your shoulders or legs.

2. Pad-Work

Bringing your gloves and pads to the beach is a great idea if you’re seeking out to get some real work in for sharpening up your strikes. The key to getting the benefit from the sand is to make sure you’re always rotating or moving forward, which will create resistance. Especially for kicks, you’ll have a lot of resistance on certain strikes.

1. HIIT

Last but not least, we’ll be taking a look at HIIT workouts. These types of workouts are probably the most effective workout you can do while at the beach. In a sense, just combine many elements, such as push-ups, sprints, air squats, and more into one, compact workout. The key is to not stop moving and run your energy tank until you hit E. The great thing about these types of workouts is, at the beach, where you have a ton of resistance in sand and water, the HIIT workouts become much more difficult than they already are.