The tough part of my husband’s life is that for a long time he traveled for his job. Last summer, he was in a different city every week. Some weekends he made it home and other weekends he didn’t. The biggest complaint he had outside of not seeing his family was that the travel impacted his workout. It’s hard to workout on a treadmill that’s 1,000 miles a way.
If you’re used to your gym or your bowflex or even just running in your neighborhood, traveling can seriously impair your workout if you let it. The key to avoiding that is to change your mindset about traveling and working out. Just because you’re in a different city doesn’t mean you can’t work out.
In fact, last October, my husband, daughter and I went to Disney World for a week. It was our first vacation in six years that we got to take all together. We stayed at a nice hotel and walked the parks and just had a great time. Before we booked the trip, however, I did some homework on the local hotels. I wanted to stay at a place that would provide good distractions, nice rooms, have a ‘theme’ of some kind, but most of all featured room service (my travel perk) and a gym.
The gym part was very important because I wanted a place where I could keep up my workout. My husband thought I was nuts. It was a vacation after all. I knew we would be walking the parks, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to do more than just walk the parks, I wanted to make sure I spent my 60 minutes of cardio or weight training because once you fall off the bike; sometimes it’s a lot tougher to get back on than it was to start in the first place.
There’s a book that came out recently that offers some fantastic ideas for people who travel frequently and have trouble keeping up with their workouts. Deidre King and Cecilia Tobler call it The Traveler’s Fitness Companion. King and Tobler are fitness trainers in the Virginia, Maryland and D.C. area. They have a lot of clients who travel frequently and they’re used to having to design workouts to accommodate them.
The Traveler’s Fitness Companion has exercises and stretches that can be done in the seat of a plane, a bus or a train. They call it their ‘workout formula to go.’ The book advises travelers to remember that staying fit on the road doesn’t have to mean doing the workout you do at home. They offer advise on packing some exercise bands and a jump rope for trips. The items are small, take up little room and fit in most luggage easily.
The advice in the book is ideal because it offers workable suggestions for just about every condition you might face while traveling. Whether it’s a lot of time on a plane, meetings all day and being tired leading you to want to stay in your hotel room. You don’t have to work out to the peak level you would at home, but you can maintain your fitness with a little creativity and time investment.
Remember, staying hydrated while you’re flying and traveling is ideal. Air travel can dehydrate a person. Dehydration can increase jet lag, susceptibility to illness and more. So don’t let life on the go get you down.