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Workout While Traveling

Question from a reader:

I’d like to try the 5×5 strength program. I’ve been weight training for the last 15 years, at varying levels of commitment and intensity based on my job and family situation. I’m an airline pilot, so I’m on a constantly changing schedule of about 3-4 days home, 3-4 days on the road. It’s basically impossible for me to stick to a strict training regimen like the mon-wed-fri format of the 5×5 program. I belong to a gym at home where I can do all the core lifts. But when I’m on the road, I’m limited to the workout rooms in the hotels where I layover. In a lot of the hotels, this means I just have dumbbells thru 50lb and maybe a few machines.

Do you think it’s worth trying to do the 5×5 program, and adapting it to work for me? I could do the program normally when I’m at home, but I’d have to adapt it to work at the hotel gyms at least once or twice a week. I’m thinking I could do things like lunge-walks with dumbbells to substitute for squats, push-ups and/or high-rep sets of dumbbell benchpress, and lawnmowers and/or inverted rows for my back. Do you have any suggestions? If I have to do high-rep sets, should I just do 3 sets? Or would all this just be wasting my time?

Thanks a lot,

james

Answer:

Hi James,

The short answer is doing anything is infinitely better than doing nothing at all.

If you have any say in your hotels, look for those that have some resistance equipment in their ‘fitness centers’.  

I used to travel a bit due to being in the military, and I was usually able to find a local gym that would let me workout for a fee, like a flat $10, even if I wasn’t a member.

If you find yourself stuck with lighter weights, focus on motion and form, doing a 3 seconds down/3 seconds up. It’s surprising how much more difficult it is to do reps when you do them slowly.

As a last resort, you could do a no-weight workout, which is still much better than not doing anything at all.

Thanks for checking out my blog!

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