How to keep fit while travelling

When going on holiday or visiting people one thing that is always on my mind is how am I going to maintain all my gains! There is no worse feeling than worrying about all those hours of dieting and training going out the window because you either can’t train or can’t consume. So to protect yourself and maintain your fitness and well being while travelling there is only one thing you need to do and that is prepare.

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

Most of this post is going to operate on the following pretences, you are travelling around and either staying in a hotel or friends house. You will not necessarily be in the same place each day and you will be carrying around 2 or so pieces of luggage.

First things first, in my opinion the hardest thing to get right while travelling is your diet. Buying ready made food is fiendishly expensive and also full of preservatives, namely fats that make me for one feel horrendous if consuming too much. So simply buying  ready made food in my opinion isn’t an option. What we are going to need to do is have some meal plans in place and be content with eating pretty much the same foods over and over. It also helps if you have the ability to use simple cooking equipment but even that isn’t necessary.

Chicken is my meat of choice to eat while travelling, it’s cheap, pretty standard no matter where in the world you are and can be cooked easily. Here comes the part where you say but in my hotel I have no cooking equipment. If you are staying in a hotel you need to get yourself a small grill that plugs into any wall socket such as one of these.

They come as cheap as £12 which I bought over a year ago and it’s still going strong despite daily use. This will solve all your meat and protein worries, the next part is carbs. If you have access to cooking equipment then carbs are so easy, rice, pasta, potato is all very easy to prepare. So what about carbs again if you are staying in a hotel or have no access to a cooker. Well I have yet to be in a hotel that doesn’t have a kettle. This is going to be our boiling water source.

“Warning this cooking pasta and rice like this is done at your own risk and is rather silly but the aesthetics are worth the risk”

 Fresh pasta cooks in 2 mins in boiling water, and microwave rice can also be cooked in the packet submersed in the water. Then comes the vegetables, you are going to have to get used to raw vegetables. Still contain all the same goodness just a bit crunchier. With this improvisation and a clever combination of tupaware you should be able to hit your macros for the day with no issues.

Just remember you need there is little point to going over your maintence as unless you have the time to continue your gym routine you merely want to make sure you don’t make any muscle or fitness losses.

As for working out, obviously if you have access to a gym then use those facilities as you would at home if not then you are going to need to improvise with some old school park workouts. And if you are confined to a hotel room then simple bodyweight exercises are needed.

Park workouts

These guys in the video above as you can see are in incredible shape from purely doing workouts in parks. Some of the exercises will take years to master however i’ll break down the bodyparts and the exercises you can do.

Chest

• Pressups – All variations, legs raised, arms raised, close grip, wide grip, one arm.
• Dips – Great for a lower pec development that is hard to hit with pressups.

Back

• Pull Ups – All variations, over hand and under hand, wide and close grip, muscle ups.
• Bodyweight rows – All Variations, over and under hand and close and wide grip.

Legs

• Hill Sprints
• Lunges and split jumps
• Box Jumps

Core

• Crunches
• Sit ups
• Planks

This is very simple, and you may be like oh only a few exercises, you can still get a great workout in none the less. The hardest part is pushing yourself in bodyweight exercises and not getting bored. You have to pretty much push to failure each time as I doubt sets of 8 reps will ever be enough.

So in summary, when travelling the best thing is to maintain muscle and fitness, by ensuring you have tupperware and a prepared meal plan. If you eat 6 meals a day simply break the macros into 3 it won’t affect you. Hit bodyweight exercises hard and do some hill sprints and HIIT training alongside any cardio you would usually do.