Business trips are commonly the death of many well meaning exercise habits.
Business travelers often have to put their life, including their regular gym sessions, on hold whilst they jump from city to city on business.
It`s hard enough to keep up with a good exercise habit at best of times without the disruption caused by a trip away. Despite the best intentions we often do not continue training while we are away; the habit to train is normally attached to work out and a specific gym or location that we feel comfortable in. Once this comfort zone is removed it is all too easy to make excuses.
Where consistent progress is the key to reducing body fat or maintaining a healthy fit body, if you are away for one week in three, your progress will be severely hampered, and all your hard work in the preceding weeks can be undone by a week away stuck in a hotel room.
Coupled with this, a lack of absolute control over your nutrition, heightened stress of being away from your family and familiar surroundings, as well as the unpredictability of travel plans, your body can take a real beating.
Equipments constraints
One of the top excuses for not training is a lack of equipment. Most of my clients now appreciate that this is not a valid reason, given the calisthenic nature of most routines I prescribe. However many peoples` routines are machine based workouts on fixed path “nautilus” style machines. Despite the quality of some hotel Gyms, it is unlikely that they have exactly the same level of equipment as your regular gym.
Even if you workout with free weights it is obviously not practical to carry a set of dumbbells in your carry on luggage. So what does this leave us with for your training?
Bodyweight training
I spent my last few years dedicating my research and adapting my training techniques to a more functionally based system, I can more wholeheartedly say that training using only your bodyweight as a resistance should be the focus of everyone regardless of their age, gender, exercise background and specific medical conditions.
Without the support of a comfortable leather trimmed seats on your favorite ab crunch or leg extension machines, your body is having to work ten times harder to balance and control movements you ask of it. The fixed path nature of many Gym machines means that you are making the big strong muscles stronger whilst the small weak stabilizing muscles are being neglected even more. When using your bodyweight as resistance your body must in majority of situations, work as in a complete system, rather than the isolated nature of your normal gym machine circuit.
Limited space
Whilst some of few hotel budgets were stretched to the luxury of a suite, the majority of us must deal with hotel rooms that makes swinging the proverbial cat a practical impossibility.
One of my longtime clients recently returned from a San Francisco business trip complaining of ridiculously limited space of her hotel room where shuffling sidewards to edge around the bed and into the bathroom was the only exercise (she claims), she could manage. However despite space limitations a good number of exercises can be performed all of which are tough enough to challenge most of us.
Limited Time
Whilst some business trips are a frenetic mix of all day meetings, lunch and dinner appointments and late night entertainment, the majority are very dull where watching BBC world news becomes your stable morning and evening chore along with finding a suitable restaurant with tables for “one” and bottomless cups of coffee. Maybe I am wrong, but the trips that I have been on in my past life, my wifes experience and a brief poll of my clients who travel regularly demonstrates that the dynamic lifestyle of a business traveler, is fraught with managing your boredom till the day of your departure.
For those that do have limited time, most workouts can be done can be done in thirty minutes or less, with more time on your hands a quick 25 minutes cardio routine can be thrown at start or the end of each day.
Exercises
It would be easy for me to give you lots of abdominal exercises which pass off as a great workout. But this is just not the way I believe will give you best possible workout with the limitations and opportunities that are available to you. In fact the following short routine does not even have a crunch or situp exercise, that doesn’t mean that you will not be working you abs.
You will do the following routine in a circuit format, i.e. one exercise followed by the next until you complete all the exercise, take a rest, and then repeat the circuit once more. The following website has animated pictures demonstrating the exercises. http://www.getfit.lu/business_workout.html
The exercises;
• Standing bodyweight squat – 15 repetitions
• Split squat - 12 on each leg
• Flutters -18 repetitions
• Plank - 30 seconds
• Bent leg oblique- 16 repetitions,
• Cobra 30 seconds
• Bench dips- 12 repetitions,
A note on tempo
I find the biggest temptation is to rush through all these exercises as quickly as possible madly bashing out reps in a blur of arm and leg movements. I urge you to slow down and make a good stab at doing the movements in control without a hint of momentum.
This has the effect of improving the quality of the whole routine. Not only will you make great movements, but the time your muscles are contracted increases making your bodywork much harder, burn more calories and you will be less likely to injure yourself. Aim to perfect the movement patterns as the primary goal of your routine and the rest of the benefits will follow.
So, the next time you are stuck in a hotel room, this short routine will certainly give your body the physical stimulation it needs. And if you are little bit sharper with your nutrition too then your training progress need not be hindered by your travels.
Article Source: http://www.fitnesshealtharticles.com.
About the Author:
Tim is a fitness professional specialising in helping the busiest people achieve more with there amateur sporting interests, and at the same time ridding them of excess body fat. Based in Luxembourg, Tim writes about general fitness for keeping in shape, sports training for non professional sports people, goal achievement strategies and many other topics. Visit www.getfit.lu to get a free 18 page report "How to lose weight even when you are really busy" containing a full 4 week program which you can start today.
Working out on a business trip
