With all the best will in the world, traveling for work can throw off even the most dedicated person’s fitness schedule. You know, the one with the equipment, sometimes boring and repetitive, yet easy to follow.
However, there’s no more important time to keep your body and mind fit than when traveling for work. Read on to discover some top tips to help you stay on track whilst on the road – from meditation apps to ease your stress to easy exercises to keep you moving, we’ve got it covered.
Find Time For Stress Relief
Balancing fitness with traveling isn’t just about finding the time and place to do exercises. It’s also about keeping stress levels at a minimum and making sure that you’re not constantly tense.
At the end of the day – mental fitness is important as well! That’s why you should find the time to do some meditation for stress. Just half an hour a day can help you drop your shoulders – There are many useful explanations online, on guided meditation for stress.
What To Pack
Balancing your fitness with constant traveling isn’t impossible – but you need to plan for it. Bringing some easy-to-carry fitness equipment on your trip means you’re good to go wherever you are, and not reliant on facilities when you get there. Here are some ideas:
● A jump-rope – if you’re facing a shortage of training facilities, this is your travel-friendly companion.
● Resistance tubes – these are a kind of stretchy tubes that don’t take up much space but work in many ways, helping you beef up any group of muscles you can think of. You can use them regardless of your fitness level. They’re supposed to be strapped around specific muscles, adding more of a challenge to any bodyweight exercise; but without pressuring the muscles as external weights would.
● Hand grips – great for pull-ups on the go.
● Yoga mat – it may take up some space, but it’s worth it.
You probably cannot bring any heavy equipment like barbells or dumbbells but you can bring some duct tape and improvise with some lighter weights made from plastic bottles with water.
Being Active In Various Places
If you’re traveling to a new place for a couple of days; chances are your business schedule will be jam-packed. This may not allow you to experience all of the fitness facilities your hotel or surroundings have to offer; or they could be lacking, depending on where you’re staying. That’s why you need a quick fitness routine that doesn’t require any additional equipment or lots of space. With that in mind, we recommend doing a short, but intensive bodyweight workout.
For this, you won’t need any kind of gym, fancy equipment, or even dumbbells; just your own body. It takes only 10 minutes, but believe us – you won’t need a workout that’s more intensive than this if you do the following exercises in succession:
● Planks – 4 sets, divided into 30 seconds and 10 seconds of rest in between;
● Glute Bridges – 20 reps, hold 5 seconds each;
● Walkouts – 10 reps;
● Squats – 2 sets of 20 reps altogether;
● Pushups – 3 sets of 10 reps each.
While these exercise routines may not seem like too much, that’s just because you’re looking at each of the workouts separately. Remember – you’ll be doing all of them in the span of about 10 minutes altogether; meaning that you don’t get more than half a minute to rest in between. What this amounts to is a high-intensity workout that will give you more than enough energy for the rest of your day, even on a business trip.
Make Use Of Technology
While the modern world of global business means that many of us are traveling all the time; contemporary technology also allows you to balance your fitness with constant traveling more easily! For example, you’ve got plenty of fitness apps that you can use to make your exercising both easier and more interesting.
If you can’t be bothered with taking any kind of gym equipment on trips with you – there’s always running! That’s also a great way to get to know a new city or area. And there are helpful apps that make your fitness experience better, especially if you’ve just arrived in a new area. You can have a look at the best routes that other local runners frequently make use of, for example.
Also, if you don’t want to design a workout routine on your own – tech can help with that as well! Apps like 7 Minute Workout do just that: provide you with simple workout plans you can use absolutely anywhere, no matter where you’ll be traveling.
And for those that are truly after an all-encompassing, hassle-free solution for training while traveling; there’s probably nothing better than ClassPass. This is an all-around great solution for those who need gym membership valid all around the world. You get access to more than 30,000 gyms, fitness studios and all kinds of different facilities all around the globe. This will allow you to maintain a healthy lifestyle as you travel around the world for both work and pleasure!
Don’t Overdo It
Obviously, working out is important. However, seeing as you’re living a life of constant traveling: make sure you’re not overworking your body. After all, you could arrive at a certain place with jet lag or a heavy schedule. In that case, adjust your workout so that it’s not as intensive, or skip it altogether if you need a lot of rest. Travelling can disrupt your eating and sleeping habits quite easily, so make sure you take that into account.
Speaking of habits disrupted by traveling – make sure that you eat balanced meals if you board a lot of flights on a regular basis. People who do a lot of flying regularly fall prey to the pitfalls of airport junk food; leaving them sluggish and tired once they land, as though they flew the plane themselves. So, we recommend eating a low-carb meal before a flight, typically something that’s got a moderate amount of proteins and not too much fat and sugar. Conversely, once you land – nothing will get you up to speed better than some vitamin C; so make sure you eat some fruit or drink a freshly squeezed juice.
