Working Out While Traveling

Friday, November 21, 2014

You can't go on a grueling climb/hike every day of your vacation. Well, you can, but you have to specifically plan for it. And that's not how we do vacations. So I hit approximately four hotel gyms on this Arizona-New Mexico gig in some attempt to not lose all of my muscle development and fitness I've sweated for the past 6 months.

However, it turns out that not all hotel gyms are created equal. The Crowne Plaza PHX and Arizona Inn have free weights and non-slip floors on top of the usual gym equipment. The Comfort Suites and Comfort Inn, however, left some things to be desired. No matter. NerdFitness and Melissa Bender Fitness provide a quick hotel room workout, but I prefer to stick with what I know best. It's possible to do the 30 Day Shred (or any near equipment-less DVD, really) in a hotel gym without a DVD player. You just need this handy list of all the exercises and reps that I've written up below.

These cheatsheets still require familiarity with the DVD, or at least most of the exercises memorized. I've created another version with illustrations to help jog the memory, but I've found that the actual DVD provides a better, more challenging workout. When you're away from home this is better than nothing. I've only included the illustrated version of Level 3, as I feel that even without free weights, you can get a pretty serious workout from it. The other levels, not so much. Bicep curls are not so challenging without weights.

New life motto. Something is always better than nothing.