I’m a creature of habit and part of my daily routine is working out. While I love relaxing on vacations and sleeping in, I also like keeping up my fitness routine so I can focus on relaxing later in the day and enjoy that third glass of wine with a decadent dinner without feeling too guilty.
While some vacations make it easy to squeeze in some exercise, others it takes a bit of planning to work a workout into my day. If you like staying fit while traveling, here are some of my favorite tips for getting workouts into vacations!
Run in the neighborhood
If you’re staying in an urban area, it’s easy to head outside and run on the sidewalks or find a nearby park with trails for a jog. Not only is it an easy solution to working out, but you often enjoy sightseeing time in the city without the crowds, and if you bring a camera, you can snap some wonderful photos with some of the best natural light.
For Christmas, I asked for this running belt (OK, fanny pack), and I love it! It has spots for two mini water bottles and easily holds my phone, hotel room key, and any other important things I want to have with me.
Hotel room workouts
So you won’t be doing burpees in your hotel room but you can squeeze in some exercises in the comforts of your hotel room without disturbing your neighbors. Get up 20 minutes early to sneak these exercises in before your morning shower and you’ll be energized for the rest of your day. Some of my favorite low impact and no noise exercises include:
- Squats
- Lunges
- High knees
- Wall sit
- Side planks
- Planks or Spiderman (plank where you lift your opposite arm and leg as if you’re crawling up a wall)
- Superman (lie on your stomach and hover your arms and legs straight out)
- Toe touches (standing or lying down)
- Crunches
- Flutter kicks
- Bicycle crunch
- Standing cross crunch
- Thread (use a purse, a book, or something weighted and lift your knee and pass the object under your raised leg, switch sides)
- Calf raises
- Tricep dips
- Pushups
- Luggage rows (one arm rows using your suitcase as the weight)
- Four punches (get in a boxer’s stance and do a front jab, a cross jab, a hook, and uppercut, repeat)
On some vacations, I even throw in a resistance band into my suitcase to add some strength training to my day and add in rows, bicep curls, tricep extensions, and other moves to add on to my noiseless hotel room exercises.
HIIT routines at the hotel gym
If your hotel does have a gym but you don’t feel like running on the treadmill or hopping on the elliptical, you can always put together some HIIT combos to sneak in a quick workout and jumpstart your metabolism. On your way between the gym and your room, make sure to take the stairs and add some of the hotel room workout moves to running the stairs.
Combine these moves to make your own HIIT routines:
- Burpees
- Mountain climbers
- Plank jacks
- Jumping jacks
- Star jumps
- Quick feet
- Run in place
- Butt kicks
- Sweep squat
- Side lunges
- Skaters
Athletic tours
Finally, a fun way to get a workout in while traveling is to book an athletic tour. I’ve seen a rise in these types of tours, whether they’re running tours in major metro areas, biking tours, hiking tours, kayaking tours, snorkel tours, etc. You can find tours that focus on the adventure portion of the tour or ones that combine exercise and sightseeing or another type of event, like wine tasting or a cooking class.
Even walking tours are great for getting your steps and sightseeing in! Next time you plan a getaway, see what sort of active tours you can find in the area for a fun way to add some athletic adventures to your travel plans.
Some athletic tours I have my eye on for future travel include:
- Fit Tours NYC
- Vienna wine tasting and bike tour
- Mike’s Bike Tours (We could do a repeat Munich bike tour with them!)
- Epic Maui Hikes
- Rappel Maui
What are some tips you have for fitting fitness into your travel plans? Share your ideas in the comments section or join the conversation on Twitter!
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