Category: travel exercise

Top 3 ways to maximize your vacation workout routine

I’ve started wondering if maybe part of the appeal of travel is actually something that’s generally considered a negative: the hassle.

Why? Well, for one, travel keeps us busy, doesn’t it?

When you’re on the road and you’re occupied with simply getting through the mechanics of it all, it obscures any existential angst or ennui.

All the self-doubt, aimlessness and boredom of modern life is washed away. You’re thinking about things like: where am I staying, what do I want to see, where should I eat, what should I eat, is that thing safe to eat, what even is that thing, where is this bus actually going, oh fuck is it going to RAIN, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

You simply don’t have time for thoughts like, ‘Why am I here?’ or ‘What am I doing with my life?’ or ‘Why didn’t I listen when they said I should learn how to code?’

That’s where a travel workout comes in. Nothing like contemplating your life choices while getting lost on a long run or doing lunges in a park while puzzled locals look on.

But of course, things like regular exercise and diet often go right out the window when you’re on the road.

Even if you have the best of intentions, vacation workouts are really hard to stick with. Add to that the fact that generally speaking your diet is going to get more adventurous and likely less healthy when you’re traveling, and the results can be less than ideal.

You’ve heard of ‘The Freshman 15?’ How about ‘The Traveler 20?’

However, there are some ways to help you work out and burn some extra calories while traveling.

1. Walk

It’s a given that you’ll be walking more than usual when you’re traveling. But consider the possibility of consciously deciding to walk even more by thinking of it as part of your travel exercise routine.

Instead of automatically looking to take a taxi, metro, or bus, think about walking instead, if it’s not ridiculously far (and assuming you’ll exercise proper caution and research the neighborhoods you’ll be traversing.)

Not only does extra walking add bonus calorie-burning to your travel exercise routine, it’s also a great way to see more of a place. You’ll pass through real communities where real people live rather than popping in and out of metro stations at each tourist hot spot, those areas that are likely overrun with postcard stands and t-shirt shops and depleted of any speck of genuineness anyway.

2. Just do

If you can manage to stick to a fitness routine at home, there’s no reason why you can’t exercise on the road too. It’s far too easy – and again, guilty as charged here – to sort of mentally throw up your hands when you embark on a trip, and assume that since you can’t do your travel workout precisely the way you do it at home, it’s just impossible.

Pass the morning beer!

It doesn’t have to be like that.

Yeah, sure, there will be morning beer days, at least for this dirtbag traveler.

But just as with exercising at home, I try to approach travel exercise with a mindset of ‘These are the days when I work out. Period.’ Set a plan for your travel exercise routine and stick with it.

Sure, you may have to make adjustments, you may have to do some improvising, but that’s part of travel in general, isn’t it? If Tuesday is a running day and I happen to be on a plane, I’ll make a point of running Wednesday instead. Making adjustments is okay; compromising exercise altogether is slow, fatty fat-fat death.

3. No gym? No problem.

You can try to find a gym where you can work out while traveling that’ll let you in on a day pass, but in my experience these are prohibitively expensive. I think one gym in Barcelona quoted me €10.

Do feel free to fuck right off with that.

Instead, I try to bring as much of the gym with me as I reasonably can.

Portable gym equipment includes running shoes obviously, but you can get a really good travel workout with small, packable things like a jump rope and resistance bands.

For me the best portable exercise equipment to work out while traveling is the TRX cable system.

It packs away into a little bag and weighs like 1.5 pounds, making it a great portable workout gym for travelers. I found a used one for like $25.

And while it doesn’t feel quite as productive as hitting the free weights, it’s nonetheless quite versatile – and you will feel it afterward, I promise.

When I was in Barcelona and going to the muscle beach outdoor gym regularly, I’d do my other travel workout stuff then hook up my TRX to close out my routine. The other meatheads – like, the serious meatheads, not pudgy, aging wannabes like me – they always wanted to have a go on it even after doing muscle-ups and the other ridiculous shit they were into, so it’s not without its uses.

Bonus: 4. Work ya body wherever

And that brings up my other point: the gym is where you make it. Sure, not every place will have a cool-ass outdoor workout area like they do in Barca, but every place you go will at least have playgrounds and parks.

If you keep an eye out you can find chin-up bars, places to do pushups, sit-ups, stretches, planks, lunges – there are tons of bodyweight exercises you can do as a travel workout that rival the burn you get from gym equipment.

And really, truth be told, isn’t a good workout a great way to wash away the soreness of travel as well as the angst of modern life?

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