I've been running fitness weeks in Cala San Vicente since 2019, and the question I hear most often isn't about the workouts — it's about everything else. What do you do between sessions? What's the food like? Do you have time to yourself, or is it non-stop activity? The training is important, but the lifestyle around it is what makes a retreat fundamentally different from a gym holiday.
Here's what a typical week actually looks like, hour by hour, and why the rhythm of the day matters as much as the circuits.
Morning training, then breakfast as a group
We start at 8:00am with the first session — usually a circuit or HIIT workout in the garden or on the beach, depending on weather. It's 45–60 minutes, scaled to the group's level, and by 9:15am you're done. The second session runs mid-morning — strength, boxing, or another cardio format — and wraps by 11:00am.
Breakfast is served after the first session, around 9:30am. Fresh fruit, Greek yoghurt, granola, scrambled eggs, avocado on sourdough, coffee. It's cooked in-house by our chef and eaten together at a long table on the terrace. This is when the group actually starts talking — not forced icebreakers, just natural conversation over food. By Tuesday, everyone knows each other's names and why they came.
The morning structure is intentional. You train while you're fresh, eat well, and then the rest of the day is yours to shape. No back-to-back sessions, no pressure to be 'on' all day. Most of our guests are in their 30s to 50s, juggling full-time jobs and family commitments at home. They don't want a bootcamp — they want a reset that actually sticks.
Afternoons: recovery, the beach, or Mallorca itself
Lunch is served around 1:00pm — grilled fish, salads, lean protein, vegetables — and after that, the afternoon is unstructured. Some guests go straight to the beach, which is 400 metres from our door. Cala San Vicente has four small sandy bays, never crowded outside July and August, and the water is clear enough that you can see the bottom at chest depth. A 20-minute sea swim is as good as any ice bath.
Others take a siesta. We have eight en-suite rooms, all with air conditioning, and if you've trained hard in the morning and want to lie flat for an hour, no one judges. Recovery is part of the programme — not a luxury, not laziness. Your body adapts when you rest, not when you're moving.
On Wednesdays, we usually organise an afternoon hike into the Tramuntana mountains — a UNESCO World Heritage range that rises directly behind the bay. It's not technical, but it's steep in places, and the views over the coast are the kind you only see in person. The hike takes 2–3 hours, and we finish at a mountain café for cortados before driving back. This is what I mean by lifestyle: you're active, but it doesn't feel like exercise. It feels like being on holiday in a place that happens to make you move.
Thursdays, some guests rent bikes and ride the coastal route towards Pollença, or we drive to the Sunday market in Pollença town (if the timing works). The point is choice. You're not locked into a rigid timetable. If you want to spend the afternoon reading by the pool, you can. If you want to explore, we'll point you in the right direction.
Food: what you actually eat across the week
Every meal is included except one evening, when we recommend restaurants in the village. Breakfast and lunch are served at the venue. Dinner varies — sometimes we eat in, sometimes we walk into Cala San Vicente for tapas, sometimes we drive 10 minutes to Port de Pollença for seafood by the water.
The food is designed to support training without feeling restrictive. Lunch might be grilled chicken with quinoa and roasted vegetables, or a Niçoise salad with tuna and boiled eggs. Dinner could be baked sea bass with lemon and herbs, or a Spanish-style omelette with a green salad. Dessert is usually fresh fruit, occasionally a small portion of crema catalana if we're out. No calorie counting, no macros, no guilt. Just real food, cooked simply, in portions that leave you satisfied but not sluggish.
We accommodate dietary requirements — vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free — but we don't do separate menus. Everyone eats the same meal, adjusted where necessary. This is important socially. When the whole group sits down together, it creates a different dynamic than a hotel buffet where everyone plates up and disappears.
Wine is available at dinner if you want it. Most guests have a glass or two across the week — usually on the tapas night or when we're out at a restaurant. It's a holiday, not a detox. The goal is balance, not deprivation.
Recovery sessions: yoga, stretching, and mobility
We run optional yoga or stretching sessions twice a week, usually late afternoon around 5:00pm. These are 45 minutes, gentle, and focused on mobility rather than performance. After two morning sessions every day, your legs need length, your shoulders need opening, and your nervous system needs to downshift. The yoga is taught by a qualified instructor who travels with us for certain weeks, or I run it myself if the group is smaller.
Not everyone joins — some guests prefer to recover passively — but the ones who do tend to say it made a noticeable difference by the end of the week. Less stiffness, better sleep, fewer niggles. If you've never done yoga before, this is the least intimidating version: no inversions, no Sanskrit, just functional movement that helps you feel less creaky.
Evenings: social without being forced
Evenings are low-key. Dinner is usually around 7:30pm or 8:00pm, depending on whether we're eating in or going out. If we're at the venue, we eat on the terrace, watch the sun drop behind the Tramuntana, and talk. If we're out, we walk into the village — Cala San Vicente has half a dozen good restaurants, all within 10 minutes on foot — and order sharing plates. Patatas bravas, calamari, grilled prawns, pan con tomate. The kind of meal where the food keeps arriving and no one's in a hurry to leave.
After dinner, some guests go back to their rooms. Others stay up with a drink. There's no pressure either way. The group naturally splits into early-to-bed and night-owl subgroups by Tuesday, and both are fine. This is what I mean when I say most of our guests come solo but no one feels isolated — there's always someone to talk to if you want company, but no obligation if you don't.
On Friday night, the last evening, we usually do a group dinner out — somewhere special, like a seafood restaurant in Port de Pollença with tables on the sand, or a tucked-away spot in the old town. It's the week's full stop, and the tone is different: less about what you're going to do tomorrow, more about what you've done. Guests exchange numbers, talk about coming back, sometimes book the next trip before they've even left.
What separates this from a hotel gym holiday
The difference between a fitness retreat and a resort with a gym is accountability and structure, but also flexibility. At a resort, you're alone. You might go to a class, but you're one person in a room of 40, and the instructor doesn't know your name. At our retreats, the group is 12–16 people maximum, and by Monday afternoon, everyone knows everyone. You train together, eat together, and — critically — you show up for each other. If you're tired on Wednesday morning and thinking about skipping the session, someone will knock on your door. Not aggressively, just casually. "You coming?" That's the difference.
The other difference is immersion. When you're here, you're not making decisions about what to eat, when to train, or whether to bother. It's done for you. You wake up, there's a session. You finish, there's breakfast. Lunch appears. Dinner is sorted. You can think about work if you want, but you don't have to think about logistics. That mental space — the absence of decision fatigue — is as valuable as the training itself.
For solo travellers specifically, this is the format that works. You don't have to navigate a foreign country alone, find restaurants alone, or work out in a hotel gym alone. You're part of a group from the moment you arrive, but you're not forced into anyone's pocket. It's the balance that makes people come back.
Our venue is in Cala San Vicente, on the north-west coast of Mallorca, roughly 70 kilometres from Palma airport (PMI). The transfer takes an hour. We have eight en-suite rooms — shared twin, private, and premium private — so there's an option for every budget. The beach is 400 metres away, the Tramuntana mountains are directly behind us, and Pollença town is 10 minutes by car. You can see guest stories and the full week breakdown on our Instagram highlights, or explore our Spain retreat page for dates and availability.