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How to Stay Consistent with Exercise While Traveling
Every trip you take is a treasure trove of unique experiences. Travel floods your senses with new sights, new people, new food, and new ideas. It can spark breakthroughs, foster new relationships, or strengthen existing ones.
But while you’re busy making memories at the top of the Eiffel Tower or sampling every gelato flavor in Italy, it isn’t always easy to hold onto your usual daily habits—exercising regularly and eating nutritious, balanced meals, in particular.
Whether you’re constantly on the road for work or you’re enjoying a long-awaited family getaway, staying consistent with your fitness goals is achievable with the right tools.
Understanding the Importance of Fitness While Traveling
Life moves at a different pace when you’re away from home. You might be driving cross-country, falling asleep in one state only to wake up in another. Or maybe you’re going abroad to a different timezone, and what feels like midnight is actually midday.
When you’re stretched thin by travel, exercising might fall low on your priority list. But workouts can add structure to hectic and unpredictable travel days and keep your energy levels high. They can also:
- Reduce the effects of jet lag
- Stretch muscles that are stiff from traveling
- Relieve travel-related stress
When everything else is new, fitness is a familiar and comforting staple.
By figuring out how to exercise while traveling, you’ll have an easier time transitioning back to life at home and your normal routines.
Travel Workout Essentials: What to Pack
If you want to consistently work out while traveling, you’ll need to adjust for the limited storage space you have. Needless to say, you won’t be packing dumbbells in your carry-on.
The good news is that modifying your go-to workout routines for the road is easier than you might think.
Instead of using weights, try resistance bands. They’re light and compact, perfect for slipping into a suitcase pocket.
Resistance bands are a great addition to any workout, not just while you’re traveling. Where dumbbells are a set weight, the resistance of your bands changes as you pull and release them, which engages your core and other stabilizing muscles that don’t necessarily work as hard during weighted workouts.
And don’t forget about your most useful piece of equipment: your phone.
The Moves App transforms any space into the perfect workout environment; all you need is a screen and an internet connection. Moves has an entire program—Move Anywhere—designed for travel, with convenient workouts for anyone short on time, space, and equipment.
Effective Travel Workouts for Women
Remember: any travel workout is effective if it gets you moving and makes you feel good.
When you’re on the road, you don’t always know how much time you’ll have or where you’ll be, so it’s important to simplify your workouts and use the space you have.
Shorter workouts—anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes—are much easier to fit into a busy, unpredictable schedule than long, intense training sessions. And they’re often just as impactful.
If you’re working out in a small space, it’s easy to incorporate stationary strength and cardio exercises like:
- Planks and push-ups
- Squats and lunges
- Crunches and sit-ups
- Mountain climbers and burpees
- Air jump rope and jumping jacks
And if you have access to hotel gyms or outdoor areas, make the most of them.
Traveling challenges us to be resourceful. Here’s how to repurpose common objects or environments for your workouts:
- For makeshift free weights, use filled water bottles or books.
- Use your hotel room’s furniture, like a desk chair or the side of the bed, for a wide variety of bodyweight exercises, like tricep dips or push-ups.
- Incorporate a set of stairs or a sloped sidewalk into your cardio workouts for some added intensity.
When in doubt, try one of the 20 unique Move Anywhere workouts for 25 to 45 minutes of guided exercises.
Nutrition Tips: Eating Healthy While on the Go
Traffic, delayed flights, lost luggage—travel tends to throw some curveballs.
In the same way, you might not always have access to restaurants or food options that fit within your nutrition plan.
Here are a few things you can do to make sure you’re always fueled up with nutritious food even when you’re away from your home pantry:
- Pack nutritious snacks – Whether you’re hiking up the mountains or through city streets, replenish your energy with smart snacking. Opt for whole-ingredient snacks high in protein, healthy fats, and fiber that are nutritious and easy to store. Some traveler fan favorites include trail mix, granola bars, and fresh fruit with nut butter. And don’t forget to hydrate! You can find some of our favorite travel-friendly snacks here.
- Research restaurants – One of the many pleasures of traveling is dining out. Look up the menus of nearby restaurants to find the yummiest and most nutritious meals you know you and your travel companions will enjoy. That way, you can enjoy a real taste of the local cuisine while staying true to your nutrition goals.
- Keep Track - If you usually track macros down to the gram, try the intuitive “Build Your Plate” method instead:
- ¼ plate of protein
- ¼ plate of complex carbs
- ½ plate of non-starchy fruits and veggies, with some healthy fats, too
With this system, you’ll be able to see how nutritious your plate is, without precise measurements that are difficult to track while out and about.
Staying Motivated: Working Out While Traveling
Remaining consistent while on the road or on vacation can certainly be a challenge. But at the end of the day, it’s mostly a mental game (after all, getting started is often the hardest part of any workout).
Here are some strategies to help you stay on track while on the road:
- Familiarize yourself with your travel schedule so you can set realistic fitness goals. If you’re going to be on a plane for six hours, keep your workout short and sweet. But if you have a free day during your trip, you can aim for something longer and more strenuous, like a hike.
- Choose workouts you know you’ll enjoy, or do something you’ve always been eager to try. Traveling is a great time to experiment—with food, culture, and yes, fitness. See what the local fitness scene is like and find new inspiration.
- If you’re traveling with loved ones, ask them to keep you accountable. Better yet, invite them to join in on your workouts. It can be a way to bond and make memories on your trip.
If you’re still in search of fitness motivation, look to the Moves community for inspiration and support. No matter where you are, or what time it is, you can connect with like-minded people who are happy to cheer you on during your travel fitness journey.
Local Fitness: Integrating Exercise with Travel Experiences
Exercising while traveling isn’t merely a task to tick off your do-to list—it’s an adventure. There’s no better way to immerse yourself in the local culture and experience everything a city has to offer. Working out while traveling doesn’t appeal to you? Then don’t. Taking a week or two off from your workout routine will NOT derail overall progress. In fact, we encourage taking a deload week to ensure sustained progress from your workouts.
Moves founder Madeline Custer takes every chance she can to explore the outdoors on her travels, including beautiful locations around Montana and Colorado. For her, hiking up mountain peaks and around canyons is as much about staying fit as it is about connecting with the spirit of a new place.
Check out the local scene for creative ways to stay active while seeing the sights or experiencing a slice of culture. That could include:
- Martial arts specific to the area
- Rock climbing or river rafting at national parks
- Scenic hikes
- Swimming, snorkeling, or scuba diving
- Walking or biking tours
- Yoga classes
This turns your workout into an experience, too.
Success Stories: Women Staying Fit During Travels
If staying fit and eating healthy while traveling seems daunting, learn about the stories of real women who are making it work and loving every minute of it.
Cassie L—a 12th-grade teacher, Moves user, and Tighter Together winner—was able to complete 95% of her workouts even while traveling to Mexico with her students. The combination of hotel gyms and doable 30-minute workouts helped her stay consistent.
She used this same strategy to find time to exercise during her workday. Lunch breaks and planning periods were perfect opportunities for her to sweat out the stresses of planning graduation and senior class events.
Cassie reminds us that when we’re away from our home community, we can find strength in virtual ones. She says, “The community fostered on Facebook and Instagram served as a wellspring of inspiration and unwavering support, propelling me to surpass my own expectations.”
Move Anywhere: Travel Fitness Made Easy
Working out while traveling doesn’t have to be a burden; on the contrary, it can help you explore new sights, immerse yourself in the local scene, and stay awake and energized.
If you need a tour guide for your travel fitness adventure, there’s Move Anywhere.
With workouts between 25 and 45 minutes, using only resistance bands and an elevated step, you can worry less about limited time and space and focus more on simply moving, no matter where your travels take you.
Sources:
The Washington Post. Running away from jet lag: How exercise can help overcome travel fatigue. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/running-away-from-jet-lag-how-exercise-can-help-overcome-travel-fatigue/2013/04/22/c93a6bce-9ba1-11e2-9bda-edd1a7fb557d_story.html
TODAY. Should you strength train with resistance bands or dumbbells? https://www.today.com/health/are-resistance-bands-better-dumbbells-t218763
Healthline. 14 Healthy Road Trip Snacks. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/healthy-road-trip-snacks
