When you are traveling either for work or vacation do you find it difficult to stick to your workouts?
If you are like me, you probably have a typical routine of where you workout and what time of day you workout, and you enjoy sticking to that routine. Going away for a few days or a few weeks throws us out of our typical routine, and unless you learn to be flexible, before you know it your vacation is over and you completed zero workouts!
Instead of throwing out any progress you have made leading up to your time away or allowing personal fitness goals to slip away while on vacation, let’s look at a few tips on how to adopt a new routine while enjoying your vacation.
Familiarize yourself with the area you are visiting.
Is there a hotel gym?
Is there a gym nearby that offers reasonable drop-in or weekly rates?
Is there a facility nearby that you are already a member of in your city? (Gold’s gym, Orange Theory Fitness, Goodlife, Anytime Fitness…).
Are you near a park, playground, or walking paths & trails?
Are you staying in a place that has some available fitness equipment?
My husband and I have been vacationing in the Coachella Valley area for 10 years. Needless to say we have become quite familiar with the area and are able to fit in our workouts seamlessly now. We used to get a weekly pass at Gold’s gym in Palm Desert for a fantastic rate ($45 for two weeks!). However, now that it has changed to EOS Fitness we have never been able to negotiate as good of a deal.
Thus, we shopped around and now workout at the La Quinta Community Fitness Center each year. This is a gem of a little gym! Granted, it does not offer equipment for heavier lifting (no Olympic bars), but it does have a good variety of equipment (as well as an outdoor fitness area), and the cost is only $5.00 per day! If you are a resident of La Quinta a yearly membership is only $50!!
We have also been lucky to have stayed in a few places where there has been some fitness equipment available. We have stayed in a home with bicycles and were able to explore the area we were in, and the home we have rented for the past 3 years has a couple of 10lb dumbbells, resistance bands, skipping rope, and a yoga mat. Enough to do a quick higher intensity workout without spending money going to a gym.
Step outside of your normal routine and try new forms of exercise.
If you are normally a gym-goer and you can’t find a gym to workout in while you are away, then explore other ways to get your workout in. This is as easy as finding a park or playground. There are oodles of body weight exercises you can do (squats, jump squats, lunges, burpees, push-ups, tricep dips, inverted rows, pull-ups, chin-ups, sprints, hill walking, step-ups, abdominal exercises…) with no equipment or some of the equipment you would find in a playground (benches, monkey bars, ladders, rings…).
Rent bikes and travel the bike paths or find great hiking trails. I personally like the AllTrails app which can help you find the perfect hiking or mountain biking trail nearby!