11 Tips For Staying Fit While Traveling

If you don’t work out while traveling, you’ll start noticing extra pounds on the scale after a few weeks of physical inactivity. If you don’t gain fat, you’ll simply lose your muscular or toned look. Yeah sure, you walk a lot more when you travel, especially when you are the type who doesn’t like to waste too much money on taxi rides. But, this is not enough to make up for your intense daily training sessions back home. Thus here are some tips to keep in shape while traveling:

Take Gym Training Clothing Along

This includes jogging shoes, which you can also hit the gym with. Plus, swimming board shorts that you can both train and swim in. As well as a comfortable tank-top shirt. Quick dry towels are handy since they take up little baggage space, dry quickly and are well suited to the gym.

Tick The Setting “Gym Included” in Accommodation Apps

For example, Booking.com allows you to specify the amenities you require during your stay when you search for accommodation. I normally tick “gym included” along with “free wifi”. Think about it this way: The money you save by not having to get a day-pass at an external gym can be deducted from the price of your hotel booking.

Learn about Calisthenics

This is a way of training simply by using your body-weight, e.g. doing pushups, sit-ups, and squats. You should be able to do most of these in your hotel room, and in your dormitory as well. Get into the habit of doing at least a short calisthenics workout every day, even if its only 5 minutes.

However, after doing pushups every day for 4 months last year, I eventually got an elbow injury. Thus for some exercises, it’s best to allow for muscle-recovery in between. Maybe take every seventh day off, or on certain days of the week vary the exercises.

Do Yoga

Use a website like yogatrail.com to find out about nearby yoga classes. Also, take advantage of free yoga classes sometimes offered at hostels. Otherwise, do your own yoga workout in the hostel garden, or in your hotel room. Yoga mats are usually handed out freely at studios, so no need to take your own one along.

Find a Fitness Center in your Destination

Most cities have fitness centers with day passes. Some would even offer you a free trial workout, without asking a lot of questions. Avoid the insanely expensive gyms, and look around a little more, on the internet, for a reasonably priced workout. For example, 30 euros, for me, is too expensive, and a rip-off, but 15 euros is more reasonable. 10 – 12 euros is a good rate for a day pass. In a lot of developing countries, you’ll easily get day passes for below 10 euros. Also, inquire about a weekly rate, or a monthly rate (if you’ll stay for longer) as these work out much cheaper sometimes.

Enjoy Unusual Gym Equipment and Classes

After finding a temporary gym, there’ll often be unusual fitness equipment that you don’t have at home. Doing different exercises and using different machines than usual is awesome for new muscle activation.

In addition, inquire about free classes at the gym, which may overlap with your gym workout. For example, this may include a free Pilates, Yoga or Abs workout to fit in with your other training.

Go to the Sauna

Especially if traveling in Europe’s colder climates such as Amsterdam or Helsinki, sauna is a great way to build your stamina and lung capacity. It also ups your heart rate, a similar effect than regular exercising.

Winter sauna makes you feel warm inside of your body, despite it being freezing cold outside. This makes Winter-traveling more tolerable. However, in the tropics e.g. the Philippines or Rio de Janeiro, it can feel like you’re walking in a sauna outside. Thus no need for a sauna visit.

Cover Your Large Muscle Groups Each 7 Days

You don’t want to have muscular imbalances due to only working out certain muscles. Maybe you want to be barrel chested so you only do bench press. This is a mistake. You have to make sure that you work out all your large muscle groups in every 7-day workout cycle.

If you only train once a week due to traveling restraints – no problem. Simply do a few exercises of each of your muscle groups. This can be broken down into your legs, abs, chest, back, shoulders, biceps and triceps.

If you train your full body once a week, its not ideal but at least your muscles have 7 days to recover. Next week you can do another full body workout cycle.

When working out less frequently while traveling, perhaps consider extending your workout session beyond 1 hour. Let’s be honest, if you pay 15 euro’s for the right to use the gym that day, you’re not gonna want to rush through your workout in 40 minutes and then go back to your hotel. You really want to make the most of your workout. Finish off your gym visit with 10 minutes of Cardio (or longer), such as cycling, rowing or jogging on the treadmill.

Fit your Workout in with your Sightseeing

Get a small cheap second backpack, and fold it up into your main luggage. Before you go out sightseeing, put your gym clothes and shoes, along with mineral water, and a towel, into your small backpack. Moreover, when you have access to wi-fi, choose the gym you want to visit and save the location on your GPRS map. You don’t need wi-fi to navigate with GPRS. Now you can head off to the gym immediately after you visited a museum, a tourist attraction, or whatever else you want to do. You can also put small items you bought while sightseeing into this backpack instead of carrying it around with your hands.

Another important (and almost indispensable) item is to have a lock for your gym locker stored permanently in your small backpack. At least 50% of gyms expect you to have your own lock, and you don’t want to have to fork out cash to rent a lock. Lastly, if you rent a bicycle, the backpack is equally valuable for storing things you bought or need to carry with you. Where else are you going to put it?

Go for a Run in the City

You’ll be able to do sightseeing while jogging. Use the GPRS map on your phone to make sure you don’t get lost. Usually, if you go for a run on the first day you arrive somewhere new, you’ll probably get lost without a map or GPRS. But if you’ve stayed somewhere for a few days already, you’ll barely need a map.

In addition, you could download apps that will plot out a jogging route for you in whichever city you visit. Usually it helps to look for long uninterrupted roads e.g. next to rivers, city parks, or even cycling lanes.

Plus, various run tracking apps are available to track your running speed, distance, location, and duration. This is a good way of logging your exercise progress on a daily and weekly basis.

Look Up Your Sport Of Choice and Participate

Using search engines you can look up local sports clubs and partake in training. Also, use apps like Meetup.com to try new sports activities or participate in fitness boot camps away from home.

Conclusion

As you can see, the possibilities are endless to keep fit while visiting other countries. There’s no excuse to become overweight when you’re away from home. Instead, why not make it your goal to return in better shape than you left!

How do you stay fit while traveling? Comment below with tips for other traveling fitness enthusiasts!