Whether you’re trying to lose fat or gain muscle, either staying at home or traveling can halt or even hurt your progress because your daily routine is thrown off, you’re constantly busy, you may not have access to a gym. There’s good news, though! With a little planning and creativity, you can stay in shape anywhere at any time, or even improve your fitness level. Use these hacks to stay healthy and return even better than you left!
1. Carry Your Gym With You
Rather than get stuck with whatever you can find, try portable resistance-training workout. Three of the best items to include for both men and women are a set of resistance bands with door anchor and ankle strap attachments, loop bands, and a jump rope. It’s also a good idea to take a flat band, which is ideal for warm-ups and post-workout stretching. All of these are compact and lightweight, and will equip you to do both strength-training and cardio in your hotel room or outdoors.
2. Rely on Resistance Bands
Resistance bands offer a unique benefit from free weights because they create tension throughout the entire movement, requiring more control during an exercise. By forcing the muscles to constantly work, this form of resistance will increase the muscle fiber recruitment for better results. They also allow you to work from more angles, which gives you greater variety with less equipment, and aids in increased mobility and flexibility. Using a door anchor with resistance bands adds multiple exercise options to hit your full body, and an ankle strap will make leg and glute workouts much simpler. Loops bands will allow you to do a greater variation of lower body exercises with more effectiveness than bodyweight alone. These are great for activating the glute (butt) muscles as well. And by activating them before heavier leg exercises like squats and lunges, you’ll see better results because you’ll be using the correct muscles to perform the exercise, not relying on stronger muscles like quads and hamstrings to take over. Even if you’re an experienced gym rat, when you switch to bands during vacation, you’ll stimulate your muscles in new ways, which is a helpful trick for busting plateaus! Make sure to take a set of 2-4 bands, because you’ll need different levels of resistance for different muscle groups. See below for sample workouts you can use on your trip!
3. Do High Intensity Cardio
Keep your cardio short but effective. A great way to do this is high intensity interval training (HIIT) or Tabata. The method behind both types of exercise is to perform the moves with all-out effort for a short period of time, followed by a short period of rest. For Tabata, this looks like 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off for 8 rounds. For HIIT, there is more flexibility, but may be something like 30 seconds on, 1 minute off. The key to both methods is to work as hard as you can during the work period (we’re talking sprint, not jog), then rest completely to let your heart rate drop back down. The benefit of both is that all you really need is your bodyweight. You can also do this on any cardio equipment. You’ll likely burn as many calories as you would during longer duration, steady-state cardio, plus you’ll use more muscle, which torches additional calories post-workout. Example HIIT:
Jump rope, sprint, or run stairs – 30 seconds Rest – 1 minute Repeat for a total of 15-20 minutes
Example Tabata:
Mountain climbers – 20 seconds (rest 10 seconds) Jump rope – 20 seconds (rest 10 seconds) Squat jumps – 20 seconds (rest 10 seconds) Burpees – 20 seconds (rest 10 seconds)
(Repeat 8 times)
Sample Workouts
Start with the following warm up, then complete 3-4 sets of each exercise, either in a circuit or one at time (if one at a time, rest 30 seconds between each set).
Warm-Up (using a flat therapy band, perform 15-20 reps of each)
Pass throughs Bent over rows Pull-aparts Squats (standing on band, holding ends in each hand by shoulders) Jumping jacks
Upper Body Resistance Band Workout
Plank – 1 minute (no band needed) Back row (anchor in door) –15-20 reps Resisted push-ups (with flat band)– 10-15 reps Mountain climbers (no band needed) Bicep curl – 15-20 reps Shoulder press – 12-15 reps Triceps Extensions – 15-20 reps
Lower Body Resistance Band Workout
Lateral walks (place loop band around lower thighs) – 15 each direction Glute bridge (place loop band around lower thighs) – 20 reps Squats (holding band in hands at shoulders )– 15-20 reps Jump rope – 1 minute Stationary lunges (holding band in hands at shoulders) – 10-12 each leg Glute kickback (using ankle cuff and door anchor) – 15 reps each leg Leg extensions (using ankle cuff and door anchor) – 15 reps each leg Jump rope – 1 minute
Full-Body
Plank – 1 minute Core rotations (anchor in door) – 12 reps each side Fire hydrants (with loop band around lower thighs) – 12 each leg Squat with bicep curl – 15 reps Bent-over row – 15-20 reps Jump rope – 1 minute Lunge with shoulder press – 10 reps each side Burpees – 10 reps
Be sure to stretch at the end using a flat band, including hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes, chest, back and shoulders. Featured photo credit: Kelly Sikkema via unsplash.com
