How to Stay Fit While Traveling
If exercise is an important part of your routine , frequent travel is likely to blow it to smithereens. You find yourself in unfamiliar places, you lack amenities and resources, and you often have poor control over your schedule. But you don’t have to give up fitness. Here are some helpful tips from my fellow fitness enthusiast.
Strive to do less
Expect something to go wrong or change. You may have planned to visit the hotel gym before closing for an amazing hand workout, but the plane was delayed, due to an emergency, you talked too long on the phone, the kitten was rescued from the tree – oh , where is the time to go?
Instead of being upset about skipping a workout, try to do less. For example, if you usually spend 60 minutes in the gym, do a 20 minute workout . Yes, it saves time, but it also helps you avoid an all-or-nothing mentality (for example, “I’ve already missed this workout, so I might as well not be exercising at all”) and abandon it altogether.
I used to think that anything less than 60 minutes or outside the gym was not a “real” workout, which was not true. Keeping active in any way keeps the momentum for your workout, whether it’s a long walk, stretching exercises, a 15-minute bodyweight workout, or a brisk exercise you can do in your hotel room.
We’ve all had difficulty getting back to the gym after the break. I’m currently trying to remind myself that training doesn’t have to be perfect . It’s better to just do something than to do nothing, and it helps me maintain good habits, even if the workout is very fast.
Try something new
While travel seems to spoil everything and can be a bane for your fitness goals, reimagine changing your routine as an opportunity to try new things or pursue new goals. Or, if you are the type of person who is constantly exercising a lot, treat this as a necessary break.
If you usually lift heavy objects in the gym, switch to bodyweight strength training. If you have time, you can visit the local hikes and parks, where, by the way, you can do an amazing workout inspired by the playground.
When I didn’t have my usual routine , I, for example, worked on squats with a pistol, and also found more ways to be active than usual. During my recent stay in downtown Toronto, I used city bikes to get around the city and walked pretty much everywhere. I also periodically attended fitness classes and classes such as boxing. If you are meeting people, ask if they are willing to host your meeting while walking , as this Quartz article suggests.
Visit local gyms for promotions
I don’t want fancy amenities. Gyms in hotels often work for me. You can do an intense workout withjust a few dumbbells . However, if a hotel gym is not available or you have specific preferences, you can broaden your search. There are many gyms in big cities. The question arises: how much are you willing to pay?
Many day passes cost between $ 15 and $ 40. While it is a great alternative for short trips, it becomes unnecessarily expensive for anything longer than a couple of days. I’m not talking about day life, so I try to negotiate a weekly or monthly pass or ask about promotions for visitors. I recently got a great deal for a month of membership by purchasing it from Groupon. I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t asked.
Bring travel-friendly training equipment with you
If you want to stay in shape while traveling , consider getting a suspension trainer, which is a pair of straps with handles. You then attach them to all sorts of attachment points like doors, lamp posts, tree branches, etc., and use them to spice up your bodyweight workout.
You’ve probably seen how much I admired them before. I have been using them for my long travels for the past two years and have managed to stay fit (and build strength too! ).