Every March, students are given a well-deserved, week-long Spring Break when they can be free from all responsibilities and party until they forget everything they have learned since the start of the semester. Students commonly use this time to travel to warm places and do shameful things considered morally reprehensible during the rest of the year.

Often these trips require wearing revealing clothing, such as bathing suits, sandals or headbands. So in order to earn the privilege of exposing themselves, many students take it upon themselves to spend some time beforehand working on making their bodies something worth being ogled. This typically means taking a few trips to the gym, but many students are unsure of exactly how much time it takes to get that sexy bod.

My advice is to save working out until the week just before Spring Break. Realistically, it is not important to be preoccupied with physical fitness until that time. If you must spend time being concerned about your vacation prior to then, worry about planning the trip itself and whether or not you actually have the money to go, or figuring out how to bum drinks from strangers if you cannot actually afford it.

Spending a week going to the gym is more than enough effort to get toned and healthy. As students we have busy lives, and being motivated for a long time is super hard. Luckily, if you lack experience in physical fitness, you should only need to put in about 10 to 30 minutes of minimal effort during each trip, which is a standard amount for beginners. A lot of this time will be spent resting between reps, but that does not mean it has to be boring.

You can always spend it reading magazines or texting friends about how you are such a good person for being so healthy by working out and how pumped you are for Spring Break. The experience should be very familiar, because as student and local gym-enthusiast Michael Ball summarizes, “instead of sitting around at home, you are sitting around at the gym.”

If you feel nervous about going to the various recreational facilities around campus for the first time during the pre-break week, it is common to bring a friend along who is also new to the experience. The two of you should spend at least half of your time there walking around, occasionally stopping to read the instructions on machines that you have never used.

In all likelihood, there will be many things inside of these facilities that you did not know existed. Feel free to try a rep or two on a few machines, but remember that the most productive time you spend will be lying on a yoga mat, stretching occasionally. When in doubt, pick the simplest task that a bunch of other people are doing and stick with it until you feel like leaving. Usually this means hopping on an exercise bike or elliptical trainer.

Whatever activities you engage in, do not overexert yourself to the point that you start perspiring, because that is just gross. Part of the gym-going experience is being able to check out all the sexy people there, and no one looks good covered in sweat. Nicholas Paulsmeyer, an ISU student passionate about exercise, remarks that every year the gym becomes packed with friendly new faces during the week prior to Spring Break. To him and many other regular gym goers, the crowds of confused newcomers prove to be quite a diversion.

Although many students follow this classic, week-long routine, some students make the mistake of starting their pre-Spring Break workout weeks or even months in advance. At first, they may have the ambition to get in shape and start living healthier, but this typically fades when they face the unavoidable fact that the results they are trying to get are easily achieved within the first week. Beginning any workout regimen or nutrition plan so unreasonably early is simply a waste of time and completely unnecessary.

Fortunately, a large amount of students wisely chose to wait until the week prior to Spring Break to dedicate themselves to having a healthy body, which will then be subjected to the most unhealthy acts imaginable during the week that follows. Generally speaking, it should be every student’s intention to lose about 20-30 pounds during the week just before Spring Break, then gain it back during their salacious vacation.

Working on your body should not be hard. If you do it right, it may hurt at first, but throughout the week it will eventually feel great and be very satisfying. In the end you will get a body you are proud to reveal when wearing that skimpy swimsuit and especially when showing even more to a few lucky strangers. And when you see the look of appreciation on their faces, you will know you deserve it, because as Ball likes to say “you get what you earn!”