Fitness While Traveling: 5 Simple Tips

There are plenty of reasons we seek out travel – for work, hobbies or a much-needed vacation from the daily grind. However, one of the few downsides to travelling is the disruption of your workout schedules and fitness goals. Maintaining fitness is a daily choice, and between sightseeing, travel admin and indulging in delicious food and drink, it can be difficult to regularly exercise while travelling. If you’re concerned about carrying on with good fitness habits on your upcoming holiday and need some workout inspiration, continue reading for FS8’s top tips to stay fit on vacation.

The challenges of exercising while traveling

There are a number of obstacles that can interfere with fitness while traveling including:

• Having less structure in your day.
• Having little time between sightseeing, airport transfers and other travel demands.
• Needing to prioritise travel admin.
• Being in unfamiliar places and not knowing where to workout.
• Undergoing changes to your diet.

The key to overcoming these challenges is to first acknowledge that most of them are inevitable while on vacation. Then, you can start planning in advance and finding alternative ways to incorporate fitness into your ever-changing schedule.

5 tips to stay fit while traveling

Learning how to exercise on vacation can be distilled into a few chief principles: adaptability, opportunity and forward-planning. With this in mind, FS8 has curated some expert fitness advice that that you can easily incorporate into your travel plans:

• Schedule some workouts ahead of time.
• Use what tools you have i.e. your body weight, and adapt your workout accordingly.
• Use sightseeing and exploring as an opportunity to exercise.
• Be conscious of what you are eating and drinking (without putting a dent in your plans).
• Opt to increase your workout schedule before you depart for your holiday.

Let’s explore these tips to stay fit in more depth.

1. Plan your workouts in advance

Your travel plans may or may not include a fully defined daily schedule. Either way, we suggest scheduling your workouts in advance. This might mean booking accommodation that has an on-site gym or researching your next hotel to find a nearby gym. Depending on the type of accommodation you are visiting, some hotels and hostels may offer an on-site fitness class that can help take the guesswork out of exercise on vacation for a portion of your trip. If not, you might be able to plan a run in the morning before sightseeing or at the very end of your day. We recommend avoiding a workout overlap with transit days to avoid unwanted stress.

2. Adapt your workout to your surroundings

Depending on the type of trip, access to a gym or fitness class might not be feasible. You can work around this by modifying your workout to your surroundings. For example, perform workouts that utilise your full body weight only, do high reps and take shorter rest periods. Alternatively, try out a popular, beginner-friendly type of yoga during your trip. These are the types of exercises that you can do in a nearby park, on the beach or even in your hotel room.

3. Incorporate exercise while sightseeing

One of the most fun and creative ways to maintain fitness by travelling is to blend the two activities. This is particularly useful for individuals who miss the structure and direction of an FS8 workout, because it doesn’t require the same level of discipline as performing your own self-guided exercise.

Ditch Ubers for the day and explore an ancient city on foot, hike a mountain, take a bike tour of the local area, go swimming, row a gondola, do a caving tour – the opportunities are endless. Travelling Europe on a budget? No problem! Many low budget accommodation options like hostels advertise free walking tours (with optional donations) so you can keep your steps up while discovering the ins and outs of a new city.

4. Maintain a healthy diet

Of course, even sustaining regular exercise while travelling can be negated by poor nutrition. While it is tempting to both the appetite and budget to consume a diet of carbs on a trip, it’s important to ensure your diet is well rounded with fruit, vegetables, protein and healthy fat. Liquid calories, particularly alcohol, are easy to consume while travelling, so make sure you monitor your intake. You’re likely planning a trip full of jam-packed days (and maybe nights, too) – so nourish your body with energising, nutrient-rich meals, and be sure to try the local cuisine!

5. Increase your workout schedule before travelling

If you know you’re going to be short on spare time during your holiday, consider upping your workouts and working on strengthening your legs and back before you depart for your trip. Increase your FS8 classes before you travel to amplify your fitness levels, then you can just do smaller physical movements (paired with cardio through activities and sightseeing) to maintain your overall fitness while travelling.

Why exercise on vacation?

While there will be interruptions to your typical workout sessions, there are many benefits in maintaining your fitness while travelling. Instead of framing exercise on vacation with a ‘less work to do when I get home’ mentality, we encourage you to view staying fit as a way to enhance the quality of your time away. Regular exercise while travelling can help you keep up with some of the more physical demands of travel.

Hiking, backpacking and carrying luggage through airports, public transport and accommodation without elevators can be taxing on the body, so strengthening functional muscle groups and maintaining good balance will be helpful on your trip. Between loose schedules and unfamiliar beds, travel can also be quite mentally demanding, and exercise has been proven to improve sleep quality.