Hotel Room Workouts
How to maximize your training when you're forced into minimalism. No equipment required.
As someone who likes sticking to a routine, I know what it’s like to have travel (whether for business or pleasure) throw a wrench in my workout plans. I will generally either schedule a rest or deload week in my training for when I have travel planned. If that’s not an option, I’ll scope out local gyms and running routes, but life inevitably happens. Hotel gyms can be poorly maintained or non-existent, transportation options can be slim, and weather can turn south.
Here are five workouts that you can do with no equipment and virtually no space. Don’t feel bad if you need to scale these workouts down; the stress of travel, dehydration, poor sleep, and change of climate can cause serious fatigue. I began the pushup and lunge workout below when travelling from my sea-level home in South Carolina to Crested Butte, Colorado (~9,000 ft above sea level) and opted to regress from 100 reps to 50 after a few minutes of sucking air.
McGill’s Big 3
Stuart McGill is known throughout the strength and conditioning world as a magician when it comes to solving low back pain. His “Big 3” exercises, consisting of a bird dog, side plank, and modified curl-up, make up a fantastic core stability workout. Try to work up to three rounds of three reps (per side) on each of these exercises for ten second holds. You’ll quickly realize how stable—or unstable—your core muscles are. If three rounds is too much or ten second holds are too long, don’t fret. Regress to shorter holds and less rounds, but focus hard on maintaining the positions. This is the gold standard for building stability, thus preventing and mitigating low back pain in athletes and everyday folks.
100 Pushups and 100 Lunges
For a great full body workout with zero exercise equipment, it’s hard to beat pushups and lunges. Break these down into bite-sized sets, utilizing a rep scheme such as 10x10 or 5x20. You can regress to 50 total reps in each exercise, reduce range of motion on the pushups by placing your hands on an incline, or switch from lunges to air squats. If you really want a challenge, time yourself and try to set a new record each time you do this workout. Additionally, you can add in some plank holds for extra core strengthening.
ATG - 100 Tibialis Raises, 100 Calf Raises, and 100 Air Squats
If you’ve never heard of Ben Patrick, more commonly known as Knees Over Toes Guy, he’s a great follow. Patrick is all about helping people avoid pain and improve performance by exploring ranges of motion and strengthening small muscle groups that are often neglected. While Ben didn’t come up with this specific workout, I’m sure he would approve. I would definitely recommend this circuit to runners or athletes who run in their sport as it will strengthen the lower leg muscles and help prevent shin splints. Like with the workout above, break the 100 reps down into smaller sets. You can scale down to 50 of each or scale up by adding more reps or progressing from bilateral air squats to ATG split squats.
Pyramids
Now I’m calling on you to get creative with your own workout. A pyramid rep scheme is simply one that goes up as the sets progress and then back down, e.g. 1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1, 5-10-15-20-15-10-5, 9-12-15-18-21-18-15-12-9, and so on. Pick one to three bodyweight exercises and get going. You could even use time intervals instead of reps for the pyramid.
Examples:
5-10-15-20-25-20-15-10-5 lunges and pushups
30 seconds, 45 seconds, 60 seconds, 45 seconds, 30 seconds of planks and air squats
Stationary Lunges for Cardio
Throwing it back to my post on podcasts, I’d like to once again highlight Cory G’s Lunge and Learn protocol. Lunging for time is a great way to build strength and endurance simultaneously, but beware. If you haven’t done any long bouts of lunging previously, start slow. I’d recommend starting with two sets of five minutes and progressing from there. Lunging 400 meters or fifteen minutes without stopping with no prior experience is a great way to end up walking funny for the next five days.
Bonus - Mobility
After long travel days, possibly featuring delays or lost bags, you may not be up for a full blown workout. However, a few minutes of movement may be just the thing you need. I’m not a huge proponent of old-fashioned stretches like toe-touches or yanking your heel up to your butt for minutes on end. What I do find helpful is spending some time in natural positions or ranges of motion that we neglect when sitting at a desk or on a plane all day. I’m a big fan of holding deep squat and lunge positions as well as arm and neck rotations. Be kind to yourself and give this a try next time you wake up on the wrong side of your hotel bed before that conference that you really don’t want to be at.
60-second squat hold
20 arm circles forward and backward, starting with small circles and ending with big ones
30-second lunge hold on each side
10 neck rotations clockwise and counter-clockwise