Staying consistent with your workouts isn’t easy. Especially when you’re always in different places and can’t just always go to your next door gym. But no worries, staying consistent is possible also for travelers. Respect these three rules and you will.
The Sunday Habit
Being always on the move makes it hard to stick with rigid routines. My number one tip here is to take 10-15 minutes every Sunday to mark in your calendar which days you want to exercise or perform whatever kind of physical activity. Making sure to also note what time and where.
For example:
– Monday, 9am: Running (beach)
– Wednesday, 5pm: Quick Bodyweight Workout (at home)
– Friday, 3pm: Surfing (ocean)
Your weekly workout schedule might look very different. However, if you take a few minutes on Sunday to plan you will create clear but flexible weekly routines that will keep you active in the long run.
To make sure you don’t forget about your new Sunday habit a little harder, why not put a weekly reminder in your calendar right now? Set a date with yourself and commit to shaping your best self!
Never Skip Twice
“Ok, I skipped all the workouts I had planned for last week – now it doesn´t make sense to
get back to it anyway” – Have you had that thought before?
Most people manage to follow a routine for a while, as long as their motivation is high enough. As soon as life happens (especially on the road), they miss a workout, then another one, until finally their efforts get less and less and they fall back to zero. To prevent that from happening to you it makes sense to follow a thing I call the Golden Rule.
The underlying idea here is that missing workouts is inevitable. It happens, even to the best and most determined athletes. So, if it happens to you, don’t judge yourself. Rather focus on the next workout and make very sure that you don’t miss it. Get back to it. Asap.
Following this simple rule helps keep up the momentum and stay continuous – even or especially in difficult phases.
Always have a plan B
To get and stay fit while traveling, we must be flexible. We have to adapt our workouts to what’s possible in our current environment. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to have different workout plans for different situations.
So we need the right routines for when we have no equipment, for when we have little equipment (I highly recommend a TRX or comparable sling trainer), and at least one more for when we find a nice gym somewhere along the road.
Now if you stand in front of a closed gym, you´ll have your plan B ready – your sling trainer workout. And even if you forgot to bring your sling trainer, you’ll have a plan C – your no equipment workout. “The gym was closed” won’t mean you skip your scheduled training. You stay consistent.
In the best case, your routine collection consists of full-body workouts that include as many muscle groups as possible and train all 3 types of strength – power, growth, hypertrophy.
