For all of you who are in a routine in your lifetime fitness journey when your firing on all cylinders on your path to happy and healthful life, the fitness community of Napa salutes you. Perhaps you’re exercising consistently at the gym or a small group fitness class 3-4 times per week. You hit all the main body parts at the gym, using the machines in the weight room and the cardio equipment. Your diet is in check because there is a specific day set aside to where all the veggies are chopped, proteins are portioned out and snacks are prepared for a busy week. Veggies have been purchased and stored in the fridge for a week’s worth of healthy dinners. This leads to losing fat mass, gaining lean muscle, decreasing likelihood of injury, and feeling overall great because of the positive benefits exercise and a planned-out diet offers. This empowers you with a clear mindset inhibiting cravings for junk food because you’re in the zone and striving for that goal of eating clean, having a positive mental attitude, and training the body to be a fine-tuned machine.
However, what happens when you get a call from the boss with orders to head out of town for work and leave this routine that was so diligently created? You might be staying in a hotel for 3 nights in the middle of a strip mall by an airport with sub optimal food options. Not to mention your favorite local Napa gym could be 500 miles away. There is an abundance of chain food restaurants that lack the healthy ingredients you have in your fridge at home.
Perhaps a business trip to the Pacific Northwest occurs in an area housing tempting gastropubs and breweries. Some of the famed microbrews and pub food while watching ESPN at the bar could be hard to pass up. Extra calories are waiting to be absorbed, derailing a healthy diet. The urge to partake in some famous cuisine that veers outside of your dietary standards can leave you with the feeling not to miss out on such opportunities for legendary decadence in another town.
Then there’s the family visits. You might have to stay in a town where you’re unfamiliar with the layout> Obtaining quality food and finding a gym could be a challenge. Not to mention your loving relatives might reserve some of their secret family recipe pie for you. It might seem rude not to partake, adding yet another threat of consuming foods outside of your normal healthy eating regimen at home.
When staying in places outside of your comfortable home turf, you enter a foreign exercise environment with food choices that you are not used to choosing from. These are some of the many obstacles that appear during travel that hamper efforts to improve our lifetime fitness journey.
We offer solutions to our personal training clients in Napa when travelling occurs in their schedule. We help develop exercise routines utilizing little-to-no equipment that are stationary and require simple movement. There are a variety of exercises that can be performed in about 9 square feet of space. Meaning, you don’t necessarily need a gym to for a solid exercise session. Performing stationary exercises during travel means they can be performed in a hotel room or a guest room in the dwelling you are staying at. We prescribe fitness homework routines to our personal training clients who travel frequently focusing on simple yet effective mobility, core, lower body, upper body pushing and pulling exercise techniques. An example of a stationary body weight routine might look like this:
- Warm up with a dynamic stretching routine.
- Perform 3 sets of 10 repetitions body weight squats
- Perform 3 sets of 10 repetitions pushups (can be done from the knees)
- Perform 3 sets of 30 seconds elbow planks.
- Finish with 4 sets of 25 jumping jacks or a brisk 20-minute walk.
Performing routines requiring your body weight and a small area is an innovative solution when there are no exercises facilities around or time to exercise is limited. While such routines may not be as effective as 90 minutes at one of Napa’s local gyms, the exercise put into a stationary body weight routine can mitigate the detrimental effects of lack luster food options and the absence of a normal exercise routine that might be more comfortable. Something is better than nothing when on the run. Don’t let traveling throw a wrench in the spokes of your lifetime fitness momentum to healthier life. Think dynamically and use the resources we always have available to keep active while maintaining health and fitness during travel.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
