Training while traveling presents challenges, whether your a frequent business traveler or someone who only travels to visit family or for vacation. Either way, we have to decide to train or not to train and then how to adjust training before, during, and after to best meet our goals.
If you are someone who rarely travels and NEVER misses a workout and you finally go on a vacation, it's not important to your long term progress to miss a week or even two. Again, though, there aren't a huge number of people in this category.
For more people, it will be important to both maintain the habit of training or at least exercise and the training can help destress or at least make you feel better if on a vacation.
If you're a frequent business traveler, training while traveling is a must: you cannot progress if you don't train on the road, so you'll have to develop a strategy and habits to train on the road, to include what to pack, gyms to look for, and how you train on the road).
Now, let's discuss some travel hacks for lifters
Matt likes to train first thing upon arrival and before departure, as it helps make travels days feel more productive and he knows he accomplished training on those days. These aren't days to hit PRs, but to get some work done.
A pro-trip here is if you train at a big gym they often have showers, so you can train and still shower before getting on a plane.
This also helps as training the first couple days after travel tends to not feel great, so you will have trained on the last day of travel and not feel behind on your training.
Niki recommends to search for "powerlifting" when you're looking for a gym, as this probably will help you find gyms that will have the equipment you'd like to have.
Both Matt & Niki acknowledge, however, that even big globo gyms tend to have at least 1 squat rack.
Some hacks for travel:
- have liquid chalk in a travel size so it can go on your carryon bag
- if you check a bag, use a hard shell case to help protect your gear (and potentially any whiskey you take home
- pack your A7 shirts, as you'll experience some terrible benches
- Niki likes to have a small draw string bag that goes in her suitcase with her gym equipment
- Matt uses his backpack, which is also his carryon
- consider packing cubes for clothes
- eBags are great backpacks
- if you travel frequently, have pre-packed toiletry bags
- know where you can get higher protein options in the airport, or pack some
- drink water frequently
Lastly, how should you train while you travel? This depends on your goals and preferences, but in general, we can offer some ideas and tips:
- not a great time for PRs - get some work done & maintain the habit
- know thyself: will you want more frequent, super short workouts or fewer, longer workouts
- have flexibility with equipment and difficulty
- explore the space: try out new equipment and exercises you can't at your home gym or local gym
- front load stress prior to travel (go for PRs before the trip)
- communicate with your coach ahead of time so he or she can plan accordingly
- plan the training around your commitments and, for vacations, tell your family (don't go to the gym when your wife wants to go to a museum)
So, there's lots to consider and ways to train during travel better or worse. How do you train while you travel?
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