Do you find travel stops and starts your exercise routine?
In between meetings and flights, it can be a struggle to fit in workouts that you normally do at home and keeping up with them when you get back. But there are ways to make exercise and travel come together.
Here are some items we can talk about;
How do you workout?
Number one, what type of exercise are you doing at home? Are you doing endurance cardio work by running or cycling or triathlons? Are you strength programming? Or are you doing HIIT-style workouts in a class format?
What can you access?
Two, know what you have available at each location you are travelling to. If you are travelling, let us say via hotels, you may have access to a gym facility. You may not have any access to a facility because you are on the road in a motel where you have only got a small space… Also, what equipment is available to you already?
Do you have your own equipment, or could you hire some equipment? Have you access to facilities like classes, like group classes where equipment is already provided? Figure out what you are able to use/access/bring with you whilst travelling.
Schedule in exercise time
Three, planning time to work out. Just like you do at home and fitting it in with the rest of your life, planning your exercise whilst you are travelling is important. So, you may only have five minutes here to do a quick round, or you may have three opportunities to go workout. Which ever it is be sure to pencil them in. This way it gives you consistency in your workouts when you are home & travelling, and so you are not letting it all go.
Program & exercise as if you were still at home
Knowing how you exercise, what exercise equipment is available and the amount of time or the duration of time that you can train forms a really good basis to take action on now. In that first part, we talked about knowing how you exercise. It is important now to think about the aim of the workout as this should align with what you do at home and when you are travelling. What I mean by that, your goal might be muscular endurance, so you like to be just building up general toning and feeling good.
When you are programming and you think about your workouts, think about lots of repetitions, does not have to be heavy weights, just lots of repetitions. That will be staying closer to where your aims are in your workout. If burning through lots of energy was the aim before, centre your workouts around short & intense sets that maximise on your time and keep the focus in aim.
By programming your travel workouts to be the same as you do at home, you are continuing to take steps towards your goals. Rather than doing a stop/start approach with your exercise approach because of your work. Focusing on the aim to be the same in both home and travel workouts provides continuity in reaching those goals that you have already set at home.
Focusing in on the aim to be the same for both workouts at home and travelling
Sometimes you may not be in the most ideal of situations by not having access to equipment at all. This should not be the downfall and you miss exercise completely. Rather, it provides an opportunity to be really involved in what your exercise routine is about. By being organised, either by knowing what equipment is available or bringing your own equipment, this will provide some stability and some certainty to when you do your workouts that it is going to be lined up with what you are already doing at home.
Now I am not suggesting that you are going to pack a suitcase full of dumbbells and barbells to do your workouts whilst travelling. Rather, be innovative and think of other ways. One great little tool or tip that I have learned is a resistance tube is a fantastic piece of resistance equipment to use. It is versatile and it is light meaning you can just throw it in your suitcase. And it can be used in many exercises that we already do through the gym or outside.
Rather, be innovative and think of other ways
By being prepared, you can now keep your workouts centred to focus on what you are doing at home. Take this example. If your aim is normally building some strength in your shoulders. The workout routine requires you to do heavy load with shoulder press, with small repetitions and higher set amounts. Replace it with a tube and focus on a lot of downward lowering, lots of repetitions and perform many sets. You will find that it will be very similar to what your aim is, just without the heavy resistance that you are looking for. Bonus, it goes in your suitcase too.
If you are normally doing a running workout and you lack a space, you can still do short, intense workouts by focusing on leg-based exercises. The resistance tube comes in fantastic here, but most of the time, if you have got a pair of shoes and your band just go & plan a route out along with how long it is going to take you. Try to find some stairs or some hills to build up that strength rather than going for massive long runs like you normally would.
Now considering that you know these three pieces of information; knowing how to work out, what equipment you have available and planning your time out.
I hope that you guys can take your travel & exercise and combine them together without throwing the towel in.
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