This year, if one of your resolutions is to get leaner, then maybe it’s time for you to go on a fitcation — a fitness vacation. It’s a getaway that includes a health timeout as well as a holiday, all rolled into one. As we enter 2026, it has become one of the big trends in the fitness community. The fitcation was born out of a need among professional athletes to up their fitness game, but lacking access to appropriate expertise in India; either the advanced training they sought was not available here, or it was priced too exorbitantly.

Cue the huge outflux of professional athletes, like Chaitanya Gavali, who were one of the first to figure that he could get advanced training at a much more affordable cost in South East Asia. Gavali had started out as a college kabbadi and Mallakhamb player, and is now a professional Mixed Martial Arts fighter with two international titles under his belt. “I go for fitcations and bootcamps almost every year,” he says, “I have been to Thailand multiple times, and one of the biggest reasons that I think it’s become so famous is because the coaches or experts you find there are usually trained in the United States and Australia. The fitness and professional sports culture there is quite sophisticated compared to India.”