Your Private Mobile Gym: How to Stay Fit When Traveling

[Xfitchick]

You often travel and don’t always have a gym available? Don’t worry. You can still exercise. You can do it in your room, or even better, look for a park or forest nearby to do. Below a number of exercises you can do, but the list is not exhaustive.

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You can do all separate or build them into some circuit. Combine running with the other exercises (e.g. every few 100m you do an exercise). Or build all exercises in a crossfit like circuit. Do every exercise for 45 sec to 1 min, take 15 sec to prepare for the next and start again. After some 14 to 16 exercises, take a 2 min break and start again or do a run and then start again.

1. Cardio: Running

Put on your shoes, go outside and do a street or a park run. If you run in a park or forest, see the above circuit remarks. Nicely killing, but very effective.

2. High intensity cardio

You have a few options here.

Burpees: https://recapturefitness.com/what-is-a-burpee/

Jumping jacks: https://youtu.be/XR0xeuK5zBU

Mountain climbers, straight or inclined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwgirgXLYM

3. Push-ups.

A lot of people think push-ups are for your triceps. Partly yes, but depending how you do them, you also exercise chest muscle and shoulders. Putting your hands close to the body or even under it, focusses on triceps. Putting arms wide focusses on chest and depending on the position of the hands also on shoulders.

Don’t do just simple push-ups. You can vary the movement. Slow up and down, Fast down – slow up, slow down – fast-up, staying low and doing pulses. Combine all movements in a 45 sec to 1 min series or in different series of 10 to 20 reps. These movements can be used for your legs and the pull-ups too.

When doing push-ups, your whole body must be in one straight line. It doesn’t matter whether you do push-ups on your knees (easy) or on your feet (hard), your body must be straight. If you start doing curvy movements, stop with the push-ups. You screw-up your back.

4. Core exercises.

I write core and not only abs, since you should train all core muscles. Abs can be trained by upper body crunches or leg raises or a combination. Important is however that your back is pushed to tthe floor by your ab muscle. If you get a hollow back, you made the exercise too hard for your present muscle strength, so make it more easy (you want your back to stay intact).

Planks are a good alternative. You can do straight planks or side planks. As with push-ups, the body must be in one straight line, whether you do them on the knee or on the feet. So no butt up or down. Do planks for at least one minute (then you will realize how bloody long a minute is). Planks can be done on elbows or hands and you can do foot or leg movements together.

5. Squats and lunges.

Not only legs, but also your butt. Important with squats is that you make a “sitting on a chair” movement. Your knees must stay behind your tones. Othetwise you hurt your knees. Go as low as you can (up to 90° if possible). You can do the squat with a weight or without and with your feet wide or narrow (but not smaller than hip width). It will train different leg and butt parts.

Same with lunges. Both knees must be close to 90°. And keep your upper body up. Do not lean. See push-ups for different training sequences. You can do lunges while walking, switching from left to right.

6. Pull-ups.

Pull-ups are more difficult because you need something to hold. Inclined pull-ups can be done at an open door or under a stable (!!) table. But for full pull-ups, you need to find a strong bar or a tree branch. But it will give you the most sexy back you ever got in your life.

As with push-ups, pull-ups are not only to get biceps. Depending on how you do them, you also train shoulders and upper back. Small grips and palms towards you will train the biceps. Wide grips and palms away from you, will train more shoulders and upper back. So again many variations possible. See push-ups for different training sequences.

Enough exercises you make you tired and train on your trip. If you have other nice exercises you want to share and don't need specialized equipment, let us know.

[Eridan]

There are some alternative positions for most of these exercises, e. g. walking gecko push-ups, archer push-ups, commando pull-ups and more. Furthermore, once you have access to a horizontal bar om which you can do your pull-ups, there's a great variety of core exercises you can do as well.
If you don't change things up every now and then, your body gets used to your workouts and they become ineffective - besides, you'll probably get bored and you won't be able to stick to your routine.

[Spiorad_Aisce]

Really good take - It will help people who do a lot of travelling

[zombiebabe]

very simple take and very useful <3